


JUS 




Class lE>"2-iS^ 

BookJP_£5 

GopiglrtN 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Builders of the 
Beautiful 



BUILDERS 



OF THE 



BEAUTIFUL 



BY 

H. L. PINER 



"Let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow 
up through the common — this is my symphony." 

William Henry Channing 



FUNK esT WAGNALLS COMPANY 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

1903 



35 



- 



Copyright 1903 

BY 

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 



(Printed in the United States of America) 



Published November, 1903 



To All Who Would Be More Beautiful 
Than They Are 



Out of the light of the far-off stars, 
Out of silvery clouds with golden bars, 
Out of islands that float in seas of fire, 

Out of the crystal, out of the tree, 

Out of the mystery of the measureless sea, 

Out of all chaste, holy desire, 

Out of the music of the mountain stream, 

Out of the young man's vision and the maiden's dream, 

Out of longing for the beauty of God, 

Out of all pure thought, and hope, and fear, 

Out of the old man's trust and the little child's tear, 

Out of the stroke of the chastening rod, 

Out of all pleasure, out of all pain, 
Out of all loss and out of all gain, 
Out of the spirit's upward look, 

Out of the soul of my soul and every soul, 

Out of the secret of self-control, 

Out of it all and more I have wrought my book. 

Db. F. B. Carroll. 



FOREWORD 

Your body is the dramatization of your soul. 
It holds the tragedies and the comedies of life. 

An evil spirit chooses ugly external forms. A 
beautiful spirit seeks always and only to illumine 
the organism it inhabits. 

"Form can not be the form of nothing." Your 
visible appearance is but an outward actualization 
of your inner life. 

The canon of correspondence of the physical with 
the spiritual is a statute of being, unchanged and 
unchangeable, and illustrated wherever mind weds 
itself to matter. 

When the psychic forces are out of harmony with 
the sources of their power and the laws of their 
existence, they invariably deform their physical 
supports. When they are in adjustment with the 
ideal, the divine stands transfigured in the flesh and 
the mortal is glorified of the immortal. 

No dissembling within can establish holy forms 
of expression without. Man can not mount into 
manhood on an elevator. Woman can not soar 
into womanhood on the plume of an ostrich or the 
wing of a pheasant. The soul is the guardian and 
dictator over its own physical realm. 

The present volume is the messenger of this 
philosophy. It speaks with a lowly voice, but in 
reverence and sincerity. The soul of the book, 
like the soul of the author, standing amid many im- 
perfections, has faith in absolute ideals and in their 
power to fashion into loveliness everything they 
touch, and is sent forth to instil this faith into the 
souls of those to whom its message may come. 

H. L. P. 

Austin, Texas, October 16, 1903. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAG1 

I. The Builder; the Destroyer, . . . .13 

II. The Divine ever Active ; the Mortal ever Re- 
sponsive 21 

III. Spiritual Disorder ; Spoliation of Feature, . 27 

IV. The Divine Architect ; the Structure Beautiful, 35 
V. Virtue Constructive ; Vice Destructive, . . 43 

VI. "Create! Create! Reflect Me!" ... 49 

VII. Reciprocity the Law of Union, . . .55 

VIII. Not the Length but the Depth of Years, . 61 

IX. The Morning Glory and the Glory of the Morn- 
ing, 69 

X. Bring Me Back My Image, . . . .75 

XL The Invisible the Mother of the Visible, . . 85 

XII. Function According to Form and Form Accord- 
ing to Use, 93 

XIII. The Trysting-Placo of Mortality and Immor- 

tality, 99 

XIV. Humanity the Subject and the Object of all Art, 107 
XV. The Mortal Rising Up into the Immortal, . 115 

XVI. Mind and Moods Graven upon the Countenance, 127 

XVII. The Affectional Nature the Thesaurus of 

Beauty, 137 

XVIII. A Great Heart— A Grand Face, . . .145 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XIX. The Affinities of Form and Spirit Inalienable, 151 

XX. Moral Qualities the Refiners of Expression, . 159 

XXI. Soul-Companionship for the Body, . . . 169 

XXII. "Humanity . . . Cries Protest to the Judges 

of the World," 179 

XXIII. The Grandeur of Life Lost in the Littleness of 

Living, 187 

XXIV. Spiritual Estheticism the Soul's Crowning 

Glory, 195 

XXV. The Finest Bloom of Youth the Elixir of Im- 
mortality, 205 

XXVI. The Ideal, the Moral, the Plastic, . . .213 

XXVII. The Triumph of Cosmic Force over Organic 

Force, 221 

XXVIII. Man a Great Spiritual Spendthrift, . . .229 

XXIX. Not the Technique, hut the Pure Art of Living, 239 

XXX. Ask the Souls as They Pass by ; They Can Tell 

You, 245 

XXXI. The Skeletons at Our Feasts, . . . .255 

XXXII. Soul-Plastiques in Speech ; Facing toward Eden, 265 

XXXIII. The Face of Christ for Artist and Worshiper, 275 

XXXIV. The Art Gallery of the Race, . . . .281 
XXXV. The Whisperings of Nature, . . . .289 

XXXVI. The Evolution of Selfhood 295 



CHAPTER I 

The Builder; 
The Destroyer 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



CHAPTEE I 



THE BUILDER; THE DESTROYER 

When Ingomar, the barbarian, entered his tent 
and found Parthenia, the captive Greek maiden, 
arranging flowers into wreaths he was displeased, 
and said : 

"What are you doing? " 

"Weaving garlands," she replied. 

"But what is their use? " he asked gruffly. 

"They are beautiful, and that is their use," she 
responded. 

In these simple questions and answers may be 
seen the character of the Greek and of the barba- 
rian of every age, tho they may have other names. 

The Greek saw beauty in everything, and his 
body and his face grew marvelously like the per- 
fections of form and feature. The barbarian could 
see no beauty anywhere except in the coarsest 
texture of things, and then only with a coarse 
understanding, and his body and his face were 
correspondingly coarse and common. 

The Greek made fine mental distinctions, apply- 
ing them to his own life, and fiber and tissue in 
his physical frame were better grained and finer 
wrought for all his beautiful thinking. The bar- 
barian could think but grossly; his nerves never 
became the messengers of delicate building forces, 

13 



"I touch 
heaven when 
I lay my 
hand on a 
human 
body." 

Nova I is 



14 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Was some- 
body asking 
to see the 
soul P See 
your own 
shape and 
counte- 
nance." 



Walt 
Whitman 



the structure of his body was savage, like his 
mind, and his muscles were gnarled and dispropor- 
tioned. 

The Greek lived the higher mental and physical 
culture, and he acquired for himself not only beauty 
but the power to reproduce it with his hands and 
to bequeath it to his posterity. The barbarian 
lived chiefly among his appetites and passions, 
cherishing ever the combative, unfriendly qualities 
of character, acquiring for himself the physiognomy 
of the hyena, and he has left us not a single model 
of art in any form, while not a single specimen of 
his tribe approached physical perfection or gave it 
to his progeny. 

The Greek was esthetic in mind and body, and 
everything he touched grew beautiful, from the 
sandals on his feet and the helmet on his brow 
to his patriotism at Marathon and his courage at 
Thermopylae. The barbarian was uncouth in all 
his being, and everything he touched became grace- 
less and distorted, from the vandal's club in his 
hand to the miserable conception in his mind that 
power is justice and might is right. 

The Greek reveled in the most delicate inner 
graces, and for two thousand five hundred years 
the wide world has reveled in his outer graces. 
The barbarian gloated over the vulgar use of force, 
and for two thousand five hundred years the wide 
world has mourned the loss of the beautiful crea- 
tions which he demolished. 

To the Greek, beauty was next to virtue. To the 
barbarian, force was the only virtue. The face and 
the form of the one are illustrious examples of the 
power of a cultured spirit to express itself through 
a beautiful body. The face and the form of the 
other are monumental warnings of the power of an 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 15 



animalized spirit to express itself through a savage 
body. 

The builders iu every age have been its most 
beautiful and cultured types. The destroyers in 
every age have beeu its ugliest and hardest-featured 
specimens. The Greeks, with their beautiful ideas 
of order and harmony, built their inner lives and 
their architecture and their institutions with stabil- 
ity to endure and grace to adorn. The barbarians, 
with their boorish conceptions of symmetry and 
relation, built their inner lives and their architec- 
ture and their institutions with neither strength for 
utility nor elegance to charm. 

The Greek let his culture flow into his blood, and 
his mind sent along his arteries the constructive 
energy that fashioned the divinest form this side 
of Eden. The barbarian, with muddy and spirit- 
less circulation, with sensibilities icy and benumbed, 
with no ideals above the flesh, became the icono- 
clast of civilization and the destroyer of his own 
physical perfections. As the one was beautiful in 
spirit, so was he graceful in movement, beautiful 
in form and feature. As the other was uncouth in 
spirit, so was he angular in gait, uncomely in form 
and feature. 

But as the Greek won the barbarian into a love 
of culture, so may all barbarity be redeemed by 
beauty. There is something in man that unceas- 
ingly impels him to yield to the spell of loveliness. 
No matter how low his life nor how ill-formed his 
features, he has the power to conceive of beauty 
beyond the body, and the capacity to feel the affin- 
ities within the soul for transcendent graces. Not 
only so, but in every heart there is, active or latent, 
a conscious, restless yearning after divine ideals of 
inner life and outer form. 



" A Chris- 
tian spirit 
can not ex- 
press itself 
through a 
savage 
body." 

Charles 
Wesley 
Emerson 



"To. man 
only was 
given a face; 



16 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

No spiritual estate is so poor but it takes some 
cultivation and bears some fruit. No human eye is 
so leaden in its gravitations but it may be lifted 
above the horizon. It may not look into the empy- 
rean, but it may see the morning and the evening 
star, 
itouenttobe "There is not a sentient creature on the earth 
beautiful." without the instinct of perfection." Man cannot 
Pliny live without this fundamental endowment of his 
--— - as being — this impact of primal graces upon his con- 
sciousness. Moreover, there is in every intelligence 
a sense of power to mount toward these idealities, 
and there is no human being but in his tranquil 
moods has faith in his own divinity that he can rise 
into something more beautiful than he now is. 

" There is a divine sequence running through all 
the universe. Within and above and below the 
human will incessantly works the divine will." 
This divine will, if allowed to dwell in and rule 
over the human, tends unerringly and always 
toward order, symmetry, and beauty — tends ever- 
more to develop to their normal state the divine 
attributes of man, and through these to coax the 
body into ideal form and seeming. 

The culture of the Greek was a mightier force 
than the vandalism of the barbarian. Cyclops 
forging iron for Yulcan cannot stand against Peri- 
cles forging thought for Greece. The temporal 
yields to the eternal. Civilizations only emigrate ; 
they do not die. When the destroyer came to plun- 
der the temples of Athens and ravish her palaces of 
their treasures in art, the spirit of the superior race 
fell from the fragments of marble upon the barba- 
rian, and, passing beyond the Alps, taught the les- 
son of Parthenia from the Bosporus to the Pillars 
of Hercules. 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 17 



Beautiful ideals are stronger safeguards than 
battle-axes. The builder wrought with immortal 
principles ; the destroyer only with the things of 
sense. The one fashioned for eternity ; the other 
merely dismantled the symbols of the imperishable. 
The resurgent powers of spirit mount forever to- 
ward the perfect. Destruction and decay of en- 
vironment cannot disintegrate the inherent elements 
of culture nor radically estrange human life from 
the secrets and the sources of its glory. The divine 
evolution of man is the growth of the soul toward 
the great Archetypal Model. Spiritual bounty is 
the law of the unseen world ; physical correspond- 
ence the canon of the visible. Whoever opens 
wide the avenues of his heart to the opulence of 
life will magnify all the essential attributes of his 
being, and his countenance will reflect back into 
the smile of God something more of the image of 
the divine. 



"I have seen 
gleams in 
the faces of 
men that let 
me look into 
a higher 
country." 

Thomas 
Carlyle 



CHAPTER II 

The Divine 

Ever Active; 
The Mortal 
Ever Responsive 



CHAPTEE II 

THE DIVINE EVER ACTIVE; THE MORTAL EVER 
RESPONSIVE 



Nothing that is altogether beautiful cau be even 
approximately bad. Nothing that is even approxi- 
mately beautiful can be altogether bad. " It is the 
office of goodness to create beauty ; it is the office of 
beauty to show forth goodness. " Goodness is every- 
where the progenitor of beauty. Beauty is every- 
where the sponsor of goodness. Wherever you find 
spiritual integrity you may know that it is creating 
beauty. Wherever you find beauty you may know 
that it vouches for the spiritual integrity that cre- 
ated it. Wherever you behold moral turpitude you 
may know that it is creating ugliness. Wherever 
you behold ugliness you may know that it is the 
sign and trade -mark of evil within. 

Wherever there is a living organism the outer is 
the expression and the symbol of the inner life. 
"Form, cannot be the form of nothing." It must 
be the form of something. We have our peculiar 
bodily configuration and texture distinguishing us 
from all other orders of animal life because the dif- 
ferentiating qualities are found in the life -principle ; 
and every life-principle, according to rank, de- 
mands a physical organism and an expression of its 
own construction. As the character within, so the 
physical product. With every change in character 
will come a change in external expression to corre- 
spond. 

21 



"God 
thought 
the whole 
creation 
over again, 
and then 
made man 
the hearer 
of all 
dignities." 

Oken 



22 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Wealth of 
anatomy 
and wealth 
of expression 
always 
correspond." 
Mantegazza 



But the sensation of beauty is not physical. It 
does not reside in materiality. The senses are 
media only. Through them the mind grasps an 
impression, and, playing upon the motor nerves, 
transmits the effect of the sensation throughout the 
body. The afferent impulses cause thought and 
emotion. The efferent impulses bring culture to 
all the organism. Beyond these the ideational func- 
tions of mind realize the lovely conceptions which 
we designate as beauty. Here the intuitional pow- 
ers, having immediate knowledge and applying it 
to physical correspondences, give the body its finest 
texture and its most delicate graces. 

Loveliness, as such, is not perceived by the intel- 
lect, which is cold, calculating, judicial, non-impres- 
sionable by sentiment. Looking at a statue, the 
intellect sees convex and concave surfaces, recog- 
nizes proportion and symmetry of parts, and, with 
mathematical instinct, thinks of weight, mass and 
the line of gravity. A vastly different thing is 
that satisfying sense which leaves nothing to be de- 
sired when the eye of spirit, eclipsing the eye of 
flesh, sweeps over the statue, and, without logic or 
criticism, feels and knows that it is beautiful. 

Beauty is a moral apprehension. The capacity 
for it may be measured in every case by the spiritu- 
ality that tempers the conceptions of the individual. 
Examine the inner life. If you can determine the 
character of the thoughts, sentiments, emotions, 
passions, you may look into the face for their physi- 
cal transcript. Examine the face. If you can 
analyze it physically and psychically, you may 
there read the story of the inner life. 

But for departure from normal spiritual life, 
every human being might as well have been beauti- 
ful as ugly. The spirit of man is the image of 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 23 



God's spirit — the image of infinite perfections, of 
infinite beanty. This image is clear or vague ac- 
cording as the psychic affinities are cultivated or 
neglected. It reaches its greatest illumination 
when the soul, yearning after the perfect and strug- 
gling up the heights of faith, touches the hand of 
God and is drawn into communion with Him. It 
is then, also, that the body stands transfigured as 
the physical interpretation of spiritual glory. 

It would be blasphemy to say that man's spirit 
as it came from the edict of God was ugly. It 
would be equal blasphemy to say that the ideal of 
man's body in the councils of the Trinity could 
have been an unshapely thing. It would still be 
blasphemous to say that the physical being could 
become ill-visaged and graceless so long as the spir- 
itual retains the divine likeness, or that the face 
and body will not become more beautiful as the 
spirit of man assimilates the Spirit of God, the per- 
fection of beauty. 

Everything comprehended through the senses ex- 
isted in the unseen before it took material propor- 
tions. The castle was first an air-castle. The 
Ariadne and the Cupid and Psyche of Canova were 
idealities before they were realities in marble. The 
rhapsodies of Liszt and the oratorios of Handel 
were spiritual harmonies before the fingers swept 
the keys. Raphael's "The Transfiguration" and 
Eubens' "The Descent from the Cross" were men- 
tal and moral conceptions before the colors were 
mixed. All visible and all audible things were 
soul-pictures first. 

The ideal must precede and project material 
forms. The universe is but the materialization of 
God's thought. Man is the expression of the high- 
est creative energy of the Divine Mind. Created 



"Spirit 
creates form ; 
form can 
not create 
spirit." 

Dr. A. A. 

Lipscomb 



24 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



1 ' Nothing 
will make a 
man strong 
but his own 
concentra- 
tion of 
thought." 
Eugen 
Sandow 



in the image of God, the same creative power in 
finite degree mnst inhere in the human soul. For 
man is God's image, not as a photograph, but in 
the essential elements of his being, in the intrinsic 
qualities of his character. The soul has never lost 
a single endowment, "and this creative energy, as one 
of the powers of the soul, is brought into service in 
determining, for its own uses, the texture of the 
human body and the expression of the human face. 
The bodily organism being a differentiated habi- 
tat for the soul, its individualized texture and ex- 
pression must be the work of the spiritual activi- 
ties. That the invisible life-forces do construct 
their own physical correspondences constantly, 
faithfully, and universally, all history and all expe- 
rience prove. As we think, so will the face appear. 
As we have thought, so the face now appears. 



CHAPTER III 

Spiritual Dis- 
order; 

Spoliation of 
Feature 



CHAPTEK III 



SPIRITUAL DISORDER ; SPOLIATION OF FEATURE 



Departure from divine ideals engenders discord 
between soul and body as well as inharmony be- 
tween the spirit and the sources of its power. De- 
generacy of physical conditions is the inevitable 
consequence. ~Not more surely nor more disas- 
trously do the conditions of low barometer arouse 
the genius of the storm over the surface of the earth 
than does an attenuated moral atmosphere send 
whirlwinds of chaos along the nerves and lay waste 
what the higher moods have builded in expression. 

The soul clashing with the laws of being loses the 
divinest physical interpretation it is capable of pro- 
ducing. Bodily tissues are torn down, the organic 
activities are impeded, the vital currents are poi- 
soned and misdirected, nutrition is scantily sup- 
plied or becomes so burdensome to the organs of 
digestion that malassimilation follows with a train 
of evils that waste and deform. 

Man may adjust himself, approximately at least, 
to the laws of perfect being. He is then beautiful, 
or he begins the final acquirement of finished graces. 
The physical organism then submits itself to the 
sovereignty of spirit, the avenues of impression and 
expression are normally opened, the nervous sys- 
tem responds sensitively to the behests of the soul, 
the muscles are obedient to the dictation of motor 
and sensory energies, the organic functions proceed 
without the friction that kills, all the processes of 

27 



' * A beauti- 
ful counte- 
nance cannot 
hide behind 
a character 
devoid of 
worth." 

Dr. J. H. 

Kellogg 



28 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"The phy- 
sique can not 
be perfectly 
beautiful 
unless it 
manifests 
intellectual 
and moral 
faculties." 

Arnaud 



digestion, assimilation, and depuration become nat- 
ural, the vital fluids are healthful, the life -forces 
move rhythmically, the accord of body and spirit 
is made manifest, and the mortal and the immortal 
are wed in harmony. 

The constant effect of soul upon body is to mold 
it into an intelligent and legible symbol of itself. 
All malevolence weakens the affinities between spir- 
it and matter. All beneficence strengthens their 
union. A perfect body could not be animated by 
an imperfect soul. A perfect soul cannot long in- 
habit an imperfect body. "It will cure it or cast 
it off. " We are very short-lived. One fourth of the 
race dies before the age of seven ; one half before 
seventeen. But the resuscitative and recuperative 
powers of spirit over body are indubitable evidence 
of their perfect union originally, and of their com- 
mon affinities wherever they meet, while the insist- 
ent tendency toward harmony in all the physical 
realm shows the capacity of the soul for fashioning 
the body into supernal graces. 

Nor can a beautiful soul long tenant an ugiy 
body. It will neither worship long in a defiled tem- 
ple nor bow often where the altars are profaned. 
However slow the process, it will conform the body 
to its own design or abandon it to its degradation. 
If the will is supreme, and the judgment is clear, 
and the affections are pure, so that the physical 
organism may be made passive to the constructive 
forces of spirit, nerve and muscle may become the 
messengers of the divinest things that man can feel. 

One golden morning there came into Eden a 
thought of deception. Before the shadows of twi- 
light had fallen upon that day, that thought had 
stolen into the features of man and woman, and 
they slunk away to hide the first facial expressions 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 29 



of guilt and fear under the mantle of the pomegran- 
ate and the palm. And there they ate the worm- 
wood which the legend says sprang up and grew in 
the serpent's trail. Later, other thoughts came to 
man, followed by other facial modifications. Cain 
was angry, and, while angry, "his countenance 
fell. " Within a twinkling the inner sin had marred 
the majesty of the outer expression. Spiritual dis- 
order had begun its work of spoliation upon the 
features. The law of correspondence of the exter- 
nal with the internal life had been quick and sure 
in its application. The simple thought of decep- 
tion in the parent in Eden had become murder in 
the child just outside the walls; and a murderer's 
face had followed the conception and execution of 
his murderous thought. Then, when condemnation 
fell upon the fratricide, remorse wrung and dis- 
torted his soul with an anguish that wrought upon 
his features in the same agony as he cried: "My 
punishment is greater than I can bear ! " — the first 
lack-luster eye of the race ; the first nervous pros- 
tration in history. 

Weeds grow rapidly and rank. The coarse jest 
in the time of the Plantagenets became murder in 
the reign of the Tudors. The facial expression of 
royalty at that time showed the physiognomical re- 
sult of plot and intrigue, hate and envy, malice and 
regicide. The luxurious and lascivious living of 
the Stuarts reached its climax in the ponderous 
body, the gourmandish appearance, and the swinish 
spirit of the early Georges, — in the coarse, thick 
nose, the wine -bibbing mouth, the distended jaws, 
the retreating forehead, the soulless eye. 

During the Eeign of Terror in France, while men 
were guillotining their victims and hoisting their 
heads upon poles, little boys were decapitating kit- 



' * Nothing 
but the good 
of life enters 
the texture 
of the 
beautiful." 
Santayana 



30 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Dedicate 
the body to 
high and 
noble think- 
ing", and it 
will respond 
to nobler 
acts." 

Albert B. 

0/ston 



tens, and marching down the alleys of Paris with 
their trophies upon broomsticks. In the next 
generation, the children of these children, well-nigh 
dehumanized by inherited and operative tenden- 
cies, were murderers along the winding shadows of 
the Seine. 

Take two children at the age of six — twin broth- 
ers, if you will — blood of the same blood, bone of 
the same bone, spirit of the same spirit. Hold up 
before the one beautiful ideals ; train him in purity 
and vigor of thought ; teach him to love the higher 
virtues ; exercise him in all the worshipful states ; 
encourage him toward mastery over his lower self ; 
keep him conscious, as nearly as may be, of the 
value of life ; he will develop into a manly man in 
form, feature, and demeanor. Give the other 
thoughts of vice, crime, sensuality ; stun his heart 
with brutal instincts ; charge his soul with vicious 
impulses ; let his passions have rein and lash ; sink 
his ideals into the flesh ; he will grow distorted and 
misshapen from day to day until his body and his 
face have become a travesty upon the once possible 
grandeur of human form and human character. 

Properly analyzed, all men are what they seem 
to be. Whether you wish it so or not, your coun- 
tenance is the physical expression of what you have 
been thinking all these days and dreaming all these 
nights. There is no evading the law that makes 
you seem what you are. Persistent beautiful think- 
ing draws the features into harmony and then illu- 
minates them. Lascivious mental operations fash- 
ion the face of the rake and reprobate. 

You do not inherit your face. You make it your- 
self. You are absolutely the creator of your own 
physiognomy, and you will never grow so old but 
you may alter it more or less. You may inherit 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 31 



the tendency to construct your face as your mother 
constructed hers, but this tendency may be checked, 
changed, and even obliterated, so that you will look 
no more like your mother than if you belonged to 
another race. You inherit only the bony structure, 
the nerves, and muscles that make up the human 
anatomy — only such things as are common and in- 
herent in form, and such as distinguish your kind 
from all other orders of creation. It is the exercise 
of these and the play of your soul upon them that 
give you your individualized expression. It is the 
psychic forces that specialize you as a personality 
in a world of spirit — that stamp themselves upon 
your entire physique and make you look like — you. 



"Form is the 
obstacle of 
expression, 
and yet its 
only means." 
Cousin 



CHAPTER IV 

The Divine 
Architect: 
The Structure 
Beautiful 






CHAPTEE IV 

THE DIVINE ARCHITECT : THE STRUCTURE 
BEAUTIFUL 



The palmists tell us — and biology seems to have 
reduced their theory to a practical demonstration 
— that human character engraves itself, as it were, 
in the hollow of the hand. This member is not 
merely carpus, metacarpus, and phalanges. Its 
form, structure, and adaptation to uses have a sig- 
nificance that cannot be answered with technicali- 
ties and physical parts. From the lines and folds 
upon its exterior to the bones and ligaments that 
make its framework, the building instincts of the 
unseen life are manifest. 

The palm is a second face. Its meanings are 
always forceful. Whether held upward to receive 
blessings, or turned downward to pour them out ; 
whether open and exposed to reveal, or closed and 
prone to conceal ; whether thrust forward to warn, 
or vertical to call attention ; whether extended in 
friendly greeting, or clenched in defiance ; whether 
grasping your hand with the grip of honest cor- 
diality, or dropping into your fingers with charac- 
terless vapidity ; whether under the lover's eye, or 
the manicure's inspection; whether beneath the 
dermatologist's lens, or on the dissecting table, the 
palm has a meaning as mystic as that of the face, 
and the entire hand points with its index-finger to 
the creative psychic powers beyond the physical 
and visible anatomy. 

35 



* ' Wherever 
beauty is 
found, the 
form is the 
expression o1 
the idea." 
T. M. Ballim 



36 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Cast the 
features in 
an expres- 
sion of in- 
tense anger, 
and in that 
attitude try- 
to think a 
loving 
thought ; 
you can not 
accomplish 
it." 

Albert B. 

O/ston 



The print of a bare foot upon a sensitive plate 
might also reveal a cipher code to the secrets of the 
inner life. Certainly the foot itself, with corn and 
bunion, flattened toes and ingrowing nails, would 
often exhibit the physical results of sins committed 
in the search after beauty. Evolutionists and other 
scientists begin at once to classify the creature 
whenever they discover his track in the geological 
sands, or come upon the pedal bones, or examine 
the foot of the living specimen. And their classi- 
fication does not deal merely with form and struc- 
ture ; it is always with reference to the order of life 
and intelligence animating and shaping the bodily 
organism. 

""Not only the surface but the figure also indi- 
cates much that goes on in the solitudes of life. " 
Hand and foot, limb and torso, surface and texture, 
form and function, all bear the impress of the spir- 
itual activities that fashion them for their uses. In 
all these particulars the uncultured man differs 
specifically and radically from his refined and pol- 
ished brother. "Not for a moment could I doubt 
that God has stamped His idea of mind upon the 
body. " The entire physical organism is a growth 
incident to the occupancy of matter by mind. The 
body, instead of being a complete, distinct, instan- 
taneous creation, is a development of the soul seek- 
ing to manifest and interpret itself through terms 
of matter organized, correlated, and brought into 
the service of the spiritual. 

The soul of man is the master-builder. The 
problem in anatomical geometry is this: — Given 
certain bones, muscles, nerves, fibers, and tis- 
sues, all moved upon by spirit: To construct 
the grandest and noblest symbol of the inner 
life. 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 37 



What are the methods of accomplishing this? 
They are as deep as the mysteries of God ; and yet, 
all we need to know is so simple that a child may 
understand how to fashion his countenance into the 
divine likeness. 

There are twelve pairs of nerves running from 
the brain into the head and face, and thirty-one pairs 
from the spinal cord into the body. These nerves 
with all their countless ramifications are acted upon 
by human intelligence, either directly or by some 
mysterious process more remote, and, as public car- 
riers of the mind, like so many conscious electric 
currents with their telegraphic orders, they bear 
the messages out over the motory circuit into mus- 
cle and back over the sensory lines to the brain, re- 
porting that the orders have been executed and 
obeyed. 

There are in the face, according to Moreau, fifty - 
five muscles. These, as well as the entire four hun- 
dred or more in the human anatomy, are, or ought 
to be, under the control of the mind. If the mind 
thinks a certain thought, or if a certain emotion is 
generated, a certain nerve bears a certain impulse 
to a corresponding muscle, and the muscle becomes 
active, moving with greater or less vigor according 
to the inner coercion. 

Muscular activity in turn excites the circulation, 
creates heat, suffers waste, demands food. In the 
economy of nature the muscle most used is most 
fed and nourished, and the muscle most fed and 
nourished grows accordingly. Nature not only 
repairs the waste, but always adds a little more 
than is necessary for mere recouping. This sur- 
plus builds additional muscle. Whenever the mus- 
cle becomes larger and firmer than its contiguous 
muscles, it betrays the moods that have developed it. 



"Self-rever- 
ence, self- 
knowledge 
and self-con- 
trol—these 
three alone 
lead life to 
sovereign 
power." 

Tennyson 



38 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

In the physical economy three important princi- 
ples constantly obtain: First, every nerve tends 
to repeat npon muscle the action of any mental 
stimulus upon itself; so that any muscular activity 
1 often indulged is prone to reproduce the same phe- 
nomena without the conscious direction of the mind. 
Indeed, so strong and so fundamental to physical 
being is the automatic tendency of the entire nerv- 
virginal- ous system that without it the race must soon per- 

prayerfulart ish. The second principle is, that in all bodily 
shall be thy movements under the direction of the inner intelli- 
rea _ ', gence it is Nature's policy not only to enlarge and 

fate." strengthen the parts in action, but in so doing to 

Sidney prepare invariably for greater exercise next time, 
Lanier constantly increasing the capacity of the muscle for 
— nutrition and for power. The third principle is, 
that, under the processes of exercise, waste, and re- 
pair, the muscle is hardened and toughened for the 
maximum utility required and for preserving in 
permanent form the physical correspondence of the 
mental state. 

But larger exercise creates larger waste and de- 
mands increased nutrition still, and this is always 
promptly supplied in the healthy organism. Thus 
is the muscle amplified until it acquires its final 
growth and working power. Thereafter the spirit- 
ual qualities infuse themselves into the lower order 
of development and beauty blends with utility. 

According to Darwin, Lavater, Gall, Hunter, and 
a score of others of the highest scientific standing, 
certain facial muscles correspond in activity to cer- 
tain moods of mind. And not only the scientists 
but the science of life itself, demonstrated in every 
living organism, justifies these conclusions. Mus- 
cular development in the face, therefore, must in- 
evitably body forth the inner states, and the coun- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 39 



tenance must invariably bear the stamp of the sen- 
timent or passion imperious in the individual. 

If, for example, the muscles of scorn are employed 
constantly under their corresponding temper, they 
will be fed and nourished for repair and growth, 
and, thus enlarged and hardened, the look of scorn 
will become the most prominent, permanent bearing 
of the features. 

The expression once there, the question urges it- 
self : How can ib be removed? The answer is not 
far to seek. Get the scorn out of the life, and the 
scornful presence will vanish from the countenance. 
Subdue the sneers of the soul, and their physical 
supports will wither from disuse. With noble pur- 
pose and masterful will make conquest over the 
disdain of the heart, and, while the muscles of scorn 
atrophy from neglect, and the loveliness of love 
possesses all your being, the facial unfoldment will 
be like the oncoming dawn when the night is 
passing. 



"God enters 
by a private 
door to every 
individual." 
Emerson 



CHAPTER V 

Virtue 

Constructive; 
Vice Destructive 



CHAPTER V 



VIRTUE CONSTRUCTIVE ; VICE DESTRUCTIVE 



The best way to keep the lines out of your face 
is to keep the wrinkles out of your soul. 

The hieroglyphs that cross or circle, compass or 
tattoo your features are but varieties of the hand- 
writing on the walls of your life. You may con- 
fuse these lines with the stratagem of facial flexi- 
bility, but you cannot prevent the Daniels from 
reading them. 

If they are the etchings of malice, hatred, envy, 
scorn, malignity in any form, you cannot by per- 
functory or automatic extemporizing smile yourself 
into amiability of expression. Whenever you be- 
gin to play fantastic tricks with your countenance 
the wise old world will know that you are masquer- 
ading. 

In all ages the meanest men have sought to parade 
a benign look. It is a compliment which vice pays 
to virtue. It is a tacit recognition of the law that 
physical correspondences must and do faithfully 
and truly interpret the soul. But you cannot fit 
the mask of an angel upon the facial configuration 
of a demon. The donkey plays not well in the 
lion's skin. Peace of expression cannot appear 
without while anarchy reigns within. 

You need not desire the look of loveliness with- 
out love. You can not warm your body into grace 
while your soul, like Neptune, swings through an 
orbit of ice. You can not illumine your features 

43 



* ' Form is 
the actuality 
of being, the 
plastic art of 
the ideal." 

Francois 
De/sarte 



44 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"The so- 
called fine 
arts have 
had their 
day; the de- 
mand is that 
the arts of 
mankind 
shall be ob- 
served now." 

Frank/in H. 

Sargent 



while your spirit, like a lost world, is whirling 
through outer darkness. You can not exalt your 
countenance while your impulses smite down your 
finer sensibilities and shatter the ideals that urge 
you on to primal graces. In spite of all surrepti- 
tious attitudinizing, your face is the waxen cast of 
your soul. There is no rogue's pathway into man- 
hood or manly appearing. The simulator may pass 
a counterfeit dollar many times, but he dare not 
often impose upon the world a dissembling counte- 
nance. Men are discerning enough to detect the 
marks of fraud and to discover the points of vari- 
ance from the genuine coin. 
f The human face animated by a clear intellect and 
illumined by a pure soul is the most beauiful object 
in all the world5| The human face vulgarized by 
appetite, mammonized by greed, . brutalized by pas- 
sion, sensualized by lust, is more repulsive than the 
grim-visaged gnomes and satyrs of fable. The 
commonest face wrought upon by the soul in travail 
of a pure and noble motive at once assumes the im- 
press of the impelling quality of mind and heart. 
A little deed done with a great purpose is ennobling 
to the countenance of man. A very small outward 
act may be seasoned with qualities deep as life and 
holy as the soul. 

The energizing forces that move from the life- 
centers through brain and gaDglia and along the 
highways of the nerves, mold the features into un- 
varying exponents of themselves. It is as if God, 
in giving the spirit a body, had said : " Speak 
through this body ; it shall forever be a symbol of 
what you are. " This was the fundamental law in 
the union of the material with the immaterial. In 
keeping its pledge the soul has striven without 
ceasing to demonstrate that the statute of cone- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 45 



spondence of the inner life with the outer form 
cannot be annulled. 

All the forces of evil within you are destructive 
of beauty. All the forces of good within you are 
constructive of beauty. With vindictive and in- 
corrigible severity distortions of soul forge them- 
selves into the texture and expression of the body. 
With wooing and inhesive persistency does majesty 
of spirit ask for embodiment in all the organism. 

If this law of the outer correspondence with the 
inner life be not true, what mean the drawn fea- 
tures of the miser ; the sneak face of the thief ; the 
empty, spermaceti physiognomy of the gossip ; the 
malicious cast of the slanderer; the open counte- 
nance of the honest man ; the telltale pallor of the 
murderer; the wincing look of the coward; the 
noble mien of the hero ; the crime-hardened visages 
in the prisons of the country ? 

If this law be not true that peculiarities of form 
and expression come of corresponding qualities of 
mind and motive, what mean the glaring eyes of 
Lear; the lean and hungry look of Cassius; the 
designing aspect of lago ; the ambitious mounting 
of Lady Macbeth ; the octopus seeming of Shylock ; 
the jealous tread of Othello ; the lamb-like meek- 
ness of Desdemona ; the chameleon countenance of 
Falstaff ; the malignant grimacing of Malvolio ; the 
mad guise of Hamlet ; the despairing agony of Isa- 
bella; the princely mold of Bassanio; the judicial 
mask of Portia; the vacant stare of Ophelia? 

If this law be not true that the visible is the prod- 
uct and interpreter of the invisible building forces, 
what mean the contracted features of old Scrooge ; 
the mock -humility of Uriah Heep ; the libidinous 
countenance of Steerfoth; the east-wind scowl of 
Jarndyce ; the ghastly grin of Quilp ; the character - 



" Sink in 

thyself; 

there ask 

what ails 

thee — at the 

shrine." 

Matthew 
Arnold 



46 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Soul and 
body are 
dignified by 
the dominion 
of spirit." 
J. T. Jacob 



less effigy of Mckleby, the elder ; the cunning glance 
of the Artful Dodger ; the broad-faced congeniality 
of Mr. Pickwick; the crushed and bruised beauty 
of Little Emily ; the pleading pathos in the face of 
Little Nell? 

If this law be not true that the features are fash- 
ioned by the spirit and temper that move upon 
them from within, what mean the kingly lines in the 
face of Gladstone ; the lordly mien of William of 
Orange ; the marvelous beauty of the poet Goethe ; 
the aggressive silhouette of the Caesars ; the brutal 
jaw of Nero ; the commanding air of Napoleon ; the 
conquering presence of Wellington ; the Stonewall 
form of Jackson ; the lion front of Lee ; the stern 
majesty of Lincoln; the facial philanthropy of 
Washington'? 

If this law be not true that the countenance is the 
soul translating itself through the physical organ- 
ism, what mean the faith- wrought features of Ste- 
phen awing with an angel's seeming the council of 
the Libertines? What mean the watchfires in Eze- 
kiel's eye; the ecstasy in the Madonna's smile; the 
divine look of love in the perfect life — the match- 
less face of the Christ? 



CHAPTER VI 

" Create! Create 
Reflect Me!" 



i 



CHAPTEE VI 

" CREATE ! CREATE ! REFLECT ME ! " 



You cannot borrow beauty. You must make it 
yourself. You cannot wear your neighbor's face. 
It would be ill-fitting if you could. 

As you cannot clothe your inner life with your 
brother's robe, so you cannot assume nor appropri- 
ate his outward graces. Everywhere spirit demands 
its own livery. Nature rises up to expose and re- 
buke the imposter who would parade external forms 
out of correspondence with the real character. 

The body cannot be silk while the soul is buck- 
ram. You cannot wear an expression higher than 
that vouchsafed by the spiritual condition or ideal 
on which your aspirations enduringly rest. 

Mastery over the lower self, and power to express 
the higher self through physical agencies, are se- 
crets that must come up out of the deep oracles of 
life. Indeed, so deep in the mysteries of being 
are our ideals sometimes that we fail to discover 
them. We are often so engrossed through the long 
years with the superficialities of the mortal that we 
lose the present glory of the immortal. We are 
prone to make the earth the center of the universe 
and ourselves the center of the earth. 

Selfishness is the anarchist of being. It is the 
curse of every phase of life — social, intellectual, 
moral, physical, commercial. Nothing escapes its 
iconoclasm. The self -centered man in society is 
awkward ; in business he is an extortioner ; in love 
4 49 



"Trust in 
thine own 
untried 
capacity as 
thou wouldst 
trust in God 
Himself." 
Ella 

Wheeler 
Wilcox 



50 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"The shew 
of their 
countenance 
doth witness 
against 
them." 

Isaiah 



he is as imperious as Caesar ; in war he is as cruel 
as a Hun ; in religion he is glued to his creed ; in 
finance lie is a miser ; in morality he is a pharisee ; 
in spirituality he is a dwarf ; intellectually lie is a 
bigot ; physically he is a travesty upon the possi- 
bilities of expression. Socially a cynic, in conver- 
sation he is always an autobiographer. He speaks 
chiefly in the first person — to him the only person. 
His face has but one quality — " I." In little things 
he is small ; in great things he is infinitesimal ; in 
all things he is full of the force of capillarity, 
drawing everything into the all-absorbing "I-I-I." 

No man full of his own conceits and inflated 
with his own vanity can have a truly handsome 
face. " Pride," says Mr. Buskin, "is one of the 
chief destroyers of beauty. " Surely by this sin fell 
the angels, and in falling lost their countenances. 
Abdiel, the faithful seraph that withstood Satan's 
entreaties to rebel, retained not only his estate but 
his seraphic look also. 

Except on state occasions, the personal pronoun 
"I " ought to be written with a dot over it. Being 
thus smaller, one could get out of it into the larger 
forms of life. A proper estimate should be placed 
by every one upon himself, to be sure, but humility 
is often a virtue while hauteur is always a vice. 

Whoever cannot expand till he can feel the eccen- 
tric circles of sympathy from other lives overlap- 
ping his own, and his own sweeping out into theirs, 
can never have a truly magnanimous look. A 
broad affection, a great life-purpose, a perpetual 
prayer, an ardent striving upward toward the light, 
a deep and abiding sense of fraternity for all the 
race, a faith that everyday looks out from the win- 
dow with Daniel — these are some of the possessions 
that cannot fade, possessions whose outer forms 



BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 51 



will stand unmarred when the storm has passed. 
They put away the self of selfishness, and in so 
doing they settle a glory upon the countenance that 
will endure beyond the stars. 

There is an expansive power in charity that 
broadens the life, gives nobility to features and 
loveliness to expression. Every manly virtue 
makes a plaster- cast of itself in the face. The be- 
nign affectional qualities in action make both men 
and women look their best. Whoever cannot love 
largely and universally cannot acquire loveliness of 
countenance of the highest order. The lesson for 
the flippant, passionate sentimentalism of the age 
is to love and love truly — not any one person so 
savagely, but all the world civilizedly. 

Misanthropy is a vandal in Beauty's studio. A 
universal affection is one of the arch refiners of ex- 
pression. You cannot love yourself exclusively 
without hating your brother. You cannot hate 
your brother without a facial register of the pas- 
sion. 

As it is given unto man to become in spirit almost 
anything which soul could desire, even the simili- 
tude of the Father, so, also, is it given unto 
him to appear in corresponding physical perfec- 
tions. God whispers eternally into our ears : " Cre- 
ate! Create! Even as I have created! Eeflect 
me ! " And these whisperings do not come unat- 
tended by divine power. Between the creative 
spirit of God and the created spirit of man a liv- 
ing, vibrant sympathy forever plays. " A thousand 
hands reach down to help you to their peace - 
crowned heights. " Whoever opens wide the por- 
tals of his life to the fountains whence the tides of 
being flow, may drink of the waters that issue from 
the hills of God. 



* ' Grace is 
born of it- 
self, the 
natural fruit 
of the culture 
of the mind, 
of elevated 
thoughts 
and noble 
sentiments." 
Arnaud 



CHAPTER VII 

Reciprocity 
the Law 
of Union 



CH APTEE YII 

RECIPROCITY THE LAW OF UNION 

Do not despise the body; God's footstool is very 
near His throne. 

The Christ has demonstrated in his own body 

that the body of man should be kept for holy uses 

in this world, as also that it shall be glorified in the 

resurrection. We need not grow dizzy thinking of ,° M f 

soul as the 
the heights to which we must ascend. It was the soul is tlie 

human life of the master that was held up as the Hf e of the 

physical and spiritual model for all mankind. His body." 

doctrine was for the soul, but the soul in its earthly P/atomst 

habitation. Fathers 

If the soul worships, therefore, let it remember 
that the body also is present at the altar. "There 
is no part of the body which may not affect mind 
or be affected by it. Their sensitiveness is mutual. 
Eeciprocity is the law of their union. The body 
acquires a certain dignity by close fellowship with 
a pure spirit. " It loses dignity by too close fellow- 
ship with uncontrolled appetite and passion. 

The body cannot be at high tide while the soul is 
at low ebb. We need to refine our senses away 
from mere earthiness. Our ears are so dull that 
they hear only the louder intonations of the divine 
voice. We hear very little without hammer, anvil, 
and stirrup. Our sight is so dim with opaqueness 
of visual anatomy that we cannot see clearly the 
landscapes painted for the spirit's eye. We need 
to listen more attentively to the intuitions that 

55 



&6 BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 



' ' A man's 
wisdom 
maketh his 
face to 
shine." 

Solomon 



whisper things which no man can teach. Out of a 
cultivation of all the senses into the service of the 
spirit come the finest touches of culture upon the 
features. 

Eeciprocity is the law of union, but only in the 
mental side of the alliance is there a reservation 
that mind is dominion and matter is subordination. 
For, while the body may affect mind reflexively, 
mind is master, whether it operate through the 
cerebrum of Herschel or through the brain of the 
man with the hoe. This is the basic principle of 
the treaty the terms of which are the absolute dic- 
tation of spirit. "The body taking part in our 
thinking and feeling, prayer and praise, is born of 
ourselves. " 

It lays waste the finest possibilities of form and 
spirit to exalt the body above the soul, or to abase 
the soul to the body's level. They must bear a 
threefold dignity : the dignity of spirit, the dignity 
of body, the dignity of their union. The majesty 
of body is symbolic ; that of spirit is intrinsic ; both 
must be held as one divine glory of creation and 
evolution. 

Do not build a palace for your body, therefore, 
while your soul inhabits a pigsty or a mere dugout 
of earth. Do not festoon your room with bric-a- 
brac and adorn it with costly paintings while the 
walls of your inner life are bleak and desolate as 
the rocks of the desert. Do not array your physi- 
cal self in furs and plumes while your spiritual life 
is shivering in rags and striving to hide its naked- 
ness in its own shame. Whoever subordinates the 
spiritual to the physical being begins the work of 
demolition for both. Woe to him who abases the 
body with foul uses. Woe to him who breaks the 
harmony in the relations of a normal soul in a nor- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 57 



mal body. "Know ye not that ye are the temple 
of God? If any man defile the temple of God, him 
shall God destroy." 

The fountain of youth is not in Florida. It came 
over in the ship with Ponce de Leon. The maxim 
is largely true that one finds nothing in a foreign 
country which he does not carry with him. We 
pour ourselves into all kinds of health resorts, so 
called, and all materia medica into our stomachs, 
seeking a panacea for our ills, when, with health- 
ful spirits and obedience to the statutes of be- 
ing, we may find the fountain of rejuvenescence 
within us. 

Health is the most contagious thing in all the 
world. Hygeia is the goddess of the earth. Her 
apostles are the gentle spirits of men and women. 
Her staple remedies are faith, hope, charity, — faith 
in self and good and God, hope that strives and is 
strong in the concrete and in the ideal, charity that 
loves the whole world with Christ-like loving. 
Disease may come, not must, in God's world. San- 
ity and soundness are the sibilants whispered in 
life's oracles. 

" Seventy years young instead of forty years old " 
is the maxim of the spirit growing mellow without 
decay. Decrepitude totters in ignorance of physical 
necessities, in imperfect knowledge of the psychic 
powers, and in the mortal presumption of running 
man's little universe in total contravention of the 
laws that govern mind, soul, and body. "We may 
not live here always, to be sure, but there is abso- 
lutely no reason why we should pass "into the sere 
and yellow leaf " while yet the bloom is fragrant 
and the fruit is luscious. Man's sun should not 
set at noon. Woman's winter should not come in 
May. The spirit is forever young. " The soul of 



"Man needs 
the ideal 
even more 
than he 
needs bread. 
The ideal is 
the bread of 
the soul." 
Edwin 
Markham 



58 BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 



"Life is 

measured by 

the depth 

not the 

length of 

years." 

Father 
Ryan 



man does not age with years. " It unceasingly cre- 
ates after its own qualities. Where youth exists 
under harmonious conditions and in proper spir- 
itual and physical adjustment, it must be beautiful. 
It must also beautify all that it touches. The child 
should die a hundred years old. Longevity as well 
as youth is one of the rewards of conformity to the 
laws of being. Evolution out of the common into 
the divine is the symphony of God. 

Do not fear the furrows that streak the forehead, 
nor the crow's-feet that track about the eyes, nor 
the parentheses that compass the mouth. Charac- 
ter wrinkles are admirable if the character is ad- 
mirable. They cannot destroy the majesty of a 
countenance that has been builded by loveliness of 
spirit. They make it all the more picturesque and 
grand. If the face has grown old in the service of 
beauty, we must look not so much at the special- 
ized anatomy as at the subliminal signs that some- 
times evade the casual glance — at the spiritualized 
effect of threescore years of beautiful thinking and 
feeling, trusting and dreaming. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Not the Length 
but the Depth 
of Years 



CHAPTEE VIII 



NOT THE LENGTH BUT THE DEPTH OF YEARS 



Humanity cannot become ugly so long as it 
keeps a beautiful soul. It is folly to say that be- 
cause some of the best people in all the world have 
rugged features the law of correspondence there- 
fore does not apply. Since the soul never ceases 
to construct according to its own designs, and since 
it may be forever young and beautiful, it will un- 
ceasingly fashion both beauty and youth unless we 
ruthlessly destroy them. 

The sunshine will melt the glacier. It cannot do 
so within a moment ; but the work will begin as 
soon as the rays fall upon the ice, and it will con- 
tinue so long as the warmth rests upon the frozen 
river. Loveliness of spirit will not and can not 
revolutionize instantly a face that is sodden with 
sin and set with deformity. But the thawing- out 
process begins with the impact of beautiful impulses 
upon their physical supports. 

The good man whose features are uncomely may 
know that in porportion to the degree and genuine- 
ness of his goodness is he restoring equilibrium lost 
somewhere in his ancestry and perhaps accentuated 
and intensified somewhere in his own past life. 
Everywhere form is secondary, congenital ; every- 
where expression is specific, individualized ; every- 
where spirit is primary, causative. Whenever a 
just spirit animates a rugged face, the beauty is 
there in spite of the broken topography. 
61 



"What can 
not be done 
in the physi- 
cal can be 
done in the 
spiritual." 
R. W. Trine 



62 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Expression 
in nature is 
spontane- 
ous ; it is the 
result of an 
unconscious 
process in 
the man as a 
creature." 
Steele 
Mackaye 



Furthermore, irregularity of feature is not neces- 
sarily fatal to beauty. The face of a country is 
more beautiful for its undulation of hill and vale. 
The mountain would lose its picturesque grandeur 
if it rose from the earth like a pyramid or fell flat- 
tened upon the plains. Beauty is not that which 
enters through the roadways of sense and quivers 
upon the retina. It is the divine harmony impro- 
vising music in the features, the immortal bloom- 
ing in mortal soil, the perfections of spirit transfig- 
ured in lip and cheek and eye, in smiles and tears 
and rhythm. 

The most sublime beauty of the sun and the most 
ravishing blend of colorings from his beams are 
held in secret across the sweep of ninety -three mil- 
lions of miles before they spread their grandeur 
upon the storm-cloud's brow. So, sometimes, an 
ancestral glory of spirit, concealed and subdued 
through long ages, comes into the visible world in- 
carnated in the most gruesome irregularities of 
heredity, the loveliness of the divine gens girding 
up its strength after a lapse of liberty, and assert- 
ing itself at last in the midst of utter physical deg- 
radation. It is the eternal atavism of Nature rising 
up toward primal ideals. 

All inequalities in the development of mental 
and spiritual forces are sure to actualize themselves 
in the texture and expression of bodily supports. 
The influences of environment are manifold. The 
stimuli of spiritual impingement are infinite. It is 
not easy to keep these in balanced effect upon the 
body, nor to know when they are in balance either 
in one's self or in another. The ability to judge a 
picture commensurately is a rare acquirement. A 
far higher attainment is the power to estimate the 
art-work done upon the anatomy with invisible 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 63 



chisel and brush in the silence. Immeasurably 
greater than the judicial faculty is the gift of 
heaven to build for beauty and for God. But the 
capacity for judgiDg and the power for building 
may be strengthened and enlarged until objective 
and subjective mind are in accord with each other, 
and each is workiDg in consonance with the respec- 
tive environment of material and spiritual life. 

A merely pretty face may be lacking in the prime 
essentials of beauty. Qualities are not physical. 
They become manifest through the physical. A 
doll's face may be pretty, but we always think of 
the wax and the sawdust. A woman may be beau- 
tiful, and we think of the divine graces beyond the 
visible physiology. 

If we go beyond the doll to the creative skill that 
fashioned it, we see the ideality of the maker 
joined with his hands to produce an image of him- 
self in kind— a lesser God reenacting in miniature 
and finitely the original creation of man. If we go 
beyond the woman, we lose ourselves in contempla- 
tion of that scene where God, after exhausting all 
other patterns, set Himself up as a model and fash- 
ioned a being in His own image. The doll is not a 
type of human beauty. The analogy ceases when- 
ever you substitute sawdust for soul. 

Fiber and tissue become less coarse under peace- 
ful states of mind. Actual physical friction, with 
its corresponding enervation, is minimized by har- 
monious pyschic control. Nerve and muscle are 
refined by processes of mental exaltation ; and, as 
they become less gross and common, the graces of 
form and motion appear, and with these a greater 
conservation of all the vital forces. 

" There is not a single virtue," says Euskin, "the 
exercise of which, even temporarily, will not im- 



4 'The soul 

seeks new 

conditions 

when the 

body no 

longer serves 

its ends." 

Moses 

True 

Brown 



64 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



1 'When 
summer hath 
lent ripeness 
to the har- 
vests, God 
casts a gold- 
en hue over 
the sheaf and 
lends a crim- 
son flush to 
the autumn 
leaves." 

Newell 
D wig lit 
Wilis 



press new fairness upon the features and upon the 
whole body. In gentle judgments and feelings 
comes grace of action, and through this a grace of 
form which by no discipline may be taught or ac- 
quired." 

The growth of facial expression as the highest 
product and interpretation of psychic activities 
must go on through all the years. Until spirit 
leaves its clay tenement it cannot abandon the pot- 
ter's work. The human face, therefore, cannot be 
most beautiful in infancy or youth. The child be- 
gins his career with a maximum of animality and a 
minimum of spiritual development. The physical 
is one hundred minus. The psychic unfoldment is 
zero plus. But zero is worth something. In God's 
mathematics it is placed to the right of infinity. 

Speaking somewhat in hyperbole, the average 
child is all stomach. Indeed, many old babies 
never get beyond this. True, there reside in the 
little animal life unnumbered potentialities that 
mount easily toward divinity ; but the secret springs 
of action have never wrought with individualizing 
power upon the body. True, also, the infant has 
the divine stamp upon him, but the expression is 
lacking in the distinctive and specializing force of 
personality. He has the powers of evolution, but 
they are embryonic. He has not yet become a co- 
worker with God in fashioning himself. The famil- 
iar union of mind and matter is yet new. It is 
wanting in adjustment of subordination and mas- 
tery. 

In infancy and childhood the face has never yet 
answered to the infinite variety of mental activities 
and moral impulses, and it has never yet had the 
play of individualized spiritual harmonies upon it. 
It therefore cannot be as beautiful as it must be 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 65 



after it has been wrought upon by the soul's pro- 
fundity of faith and fecundity of love. It could 
not show the grandeur and sublimity of feature 
found in the face of Saint Paul after he had " fought 
the good fight and kept the faith. " It could not 
exhibit the majesty which at seventy years of age 
graved upon the gnarled brow of Dr. McCosh, of 
Princeton, a serenity and a beauty that did not be- 
long to his earlier manhood. 

You cannot reason with the babe. He has never 
reasoned. Figuratively speaking, he has but one 
instinct, and that is gastronomic. The remarkable 
resemblance of newborn children to one another 
shows that there is a similarity of central control, of 
invisible molding force. In other words it demon- 
strates that neither individuality nor personality has 
yet developed within or without. The face of the 
baby, therefore, could not possibly exhibit the deli- 
cate workmanship of a refined and cultivated intel- 
lect, nor could it reveal the subtle signs of expres- 
sion that come only of spiritual illumination. 

From babyhood to maturity the animal activities 
chiefly are going on. This animal growth begins 
with a minimum of mental activity, with practi- 
cally no mentality except the mere indwelling of 
potentialities. If this embryonic energy be not 
coaxed into action, the child's face will become an 
expressional idiotic void to match the idiotic void 
within. The converse must be true, that, if the little 
oue's mind be exercised and trained, the face will 
become an intelligent and cultured transfiguration 
of the intellectual and spiritual life. From infancy 
to maturity the animal forces of preservation, 
growth, and perpetuation are in the ascendency, the 
intellect developing apace, and the soul gaining do- 
minion more thoroughly over its physical agencies 
5 



"I have seen 
sweeter 
smiles on the 
lip of seventy 
than I ever 
saw on the 
lip of seven- 
teen." 

Dr. Alexander 

Smith 



66 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Not for a 
moment 
could I doubt 
that God has 
stamped His 
idea of mind 
on the body." 

Dr. A. A. 

Lipscomb 



to perfect the development of the organism and 
subject it to individualized psychic service, so that 
when the body is fully matured the spiritual pow- 
ers are no longer needed for stimulating and sup- 
porting mere animal accretion, the whole being 
now becoming ready for the highest culture. 

After maturity, therefore, the body may submit 
itself in complete adjustment to the loftier uses of 
the soul, and, unless it is kept under the constant 
sway of appetite and passion, it will thenceforth 
yield itself to the dominion of the psychic powers, 
while all its structure, form, and expression must 
become more spiritualized day by day. 

Henceforward the body may realize more and 
more "the soul's fellow-heirship to a divine inherit- 
ance of beauty. " Henceforward the soul may exalt 
its worship in the Temple Beautiful. On and on, 
through all the years of beautiful aspiration and 
realization, the spirit may fashion and construct 
the divine architecture of the body till it be char- 
acterized by symmetry, grace, and strength ; till its 
walls be hung with sacred tapestry, its sanctuaries 
invested with the odor of sweet spices, and its altars 
be holy with love. Here in this Temple which you 
are, the self of selfishness may be sacrificed, the 
love of loveliness may be glorified in the worship- 
er, and grand living may make every transept re- 
splendent with answered prayers. 



CHAPTER IX 
The Morning 
Glory and 
The Glory of the 
Morning 



CHAPTER IX 



THE MORNING GLORY AND THE GLORY OF THE 
MORNING 

If you are not more beautiful at sixty than at 
sixteen, you have squandered the intervening years 
in the name of culture. If you are not handsomer 
at seventy than at seventeen, you have struck down 
your finest impulses for half a century. 

One cannot live in this world in the midst of 
beautiful environment, and in adjustment of his 
capacity for lofty thinking and feeling, and in con- 
templation of the Power that created life and the 
object of its joys, without a general uplift of fea- 
ture. And yet the manner in which these things 
are viewed, and the way in which they are allowed 
to impress the mind and excite the moral nature, 
will determine their effect upon the countenance. 

To see things dimly is to see them poorly. To 
look upon the visible world merely with the optic 
nerve and its coadjutant parts is nothing more than 
the lowest orders of animal intelligence can do. If 
you are merely a casual observer you cannot have 
a strong face, for you do not have clear and definite 
impressions from the external world, nor conviction 
and concentration from the inner life. These are 
necessary to strengtli of mind and decisiveness of 
feature. There may be prodigious mental activity 
scattered over the wide earth from a single mind, 
but the dissipation will gather little culture. At- 



" Tell me 
how deep 
soul-depths 
are, and I 
will tell you 
how deep is 
beauty." 

Charles 
Wesley 
Emerson 



tention, retention, use- 



-these are the implements 
69 



70 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Pride in 
beauty 
shows es- 
thetic brain- 
energy ; but 
a few vices 
will stunt its 
growth." 

Albert 
Turner 



of education. Enlightenment will not come with- 
out conformity to this technique. Acquisition, ap- 
plication — these are the terms of growth. 

A little introspection is valuable to determine 
one's capacity and standing. What is your state 
of mind after looking upon vice and crime f Upon 
human suffering ? Upon the stars? Upon works 
of art? Upon the criminal's countenance? Upon 
moral turpitude ! Upon heroic deeds ! Upon cow- 
ardly and dastardly conduct? Upon the victories 
of faith ? Upon the majesty of government ? Upon 
poor citizenship ? Upon fashionable folly ? Upon 
the characters of history or fiction? 

What is your state of mind after reading the 
Bible? When you lay aside a poem or a novel? 
When you look into your own eye? When you 
study your own face? When you balance the 
clouds? When you hear the river's moan or the 
ocean's roar? When you catch the bird's song or 
the cricket's chirp? When you feel malevolent 
creatures tugging away at your heart? When the 
still small voice whispers: "Come up higher"? 

You need not smile at this array of tasks. They 
are not the factitious labors of Hercules. They are 
object-lessons for both soul and body. Try them, 
and with a gage upon your feelings observe the 
lights and shadows as they come and go. It will 
be not only interesting but profitable. The pleas- 
ure or the displeasure you realize, the sympathy or 
disgust you experience, the appeals to higher or 
lower ideals you recognize while you gaze or listen, 
and afterwards, will determine their molding 
power upon your countenance. 

Whoever delights in the bull -fight has already 
begun to build the taurean neck and the beefy face. 
Whoever looks upon poverty and rags with a cal- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 71 



Ions eye has initiated the construction of a narrow 
and selfish countenance. Whoever contemplates 
bread only in its relations to hunger, and water 
only in its relations to thirst, and air only in its re- 
lations to breathing, is letting his expression down 
to a common level with his thoughts. Whoever 
looks with indifference upon mountain or river, sea 
or sky, is hardening his features like his soul. 
Whoever fraternizes with the tyranny of history or 
fellowships with the villainy of fiction, is drifting 
within and without from the standards of beauty. 

He who can see nothing in the rose but its form 
and color (the hog can do that) fails to get out of 
the rose the final effect of beauty upon his life. 
He who looks upon the morning glory must see also 
the glory of the morning. He who sees in the gor- 
geous sunset only a dash and a spray of amber and 
purple and gold upon the clouds (the ox can do 
that) does not assimilate the beauty-making quali- 
ties from the shining iridescence of the scene. He 
who looks upon the stars as mere lights to guide him 
through the night and keep him from stumbling in 
the darkness cannot draw from the spangled heav- 
ens the facial exaltation realized by him who walks 
out into the twilight and, lifting his eyes skyward, 
exclaims : " Day unto day uttereth speech, and night 
unto night sheweth knowledge." 

"We must get out of the sky something more 
than the light and the dew which we share with the 
weed and the worm." All our deforming forces 
gravitate downward. Man of the upward look and 
the smile lives too much on the earth and too little 
in the sky. We dig into the ground for precious 
stones when the jewels are above us. We suffer 
our anatomy to shackle our divinity and bind it to 
the earth with muscle and sinew. Keep the sky- 



" The artis- 
tic idea with- 
in must form 
the outward 
expression." 
Genevieve 
Stebbins 



72 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"The heart 
of God re- 
poses on the 
beautiful." 

Dr. F. B. 

Carrol/ 



lights open. "Let there be many windows to your 
soul that all the glory of the universe may beau- 
tify it." 

Would we assimilate beauty from the rose ? Then 
up through the odor and down through the stem 
must we see the spiritual purpose of the Divine 
Florist who gardens the rose for our delight. Would 
we appropriate beauty for our faces from the sun- 
set % Then perception must penetrate the clouds, 
and faith must sweep out beyond where the sun 
sinks, on beyond where the stars go down, to Him 
who makes both sun and stars to rise again ; — to 
Him who, of soul and body as of sun and stars, is 
the resurrection and the life ; — to Him who, as He 
endowed the soul with evolutionary powers in the 
body, will glorify both soul and body in the re- 
demption of the race. 

" We must look not so much at the sky as through 
the sky"; not so much at the flower as at the 
flower's capacity for growing beautiful and awaken- 
ing thoughts of loveliness within us ; not so much at 
the glowing sunset as on beyond, out through the 
quivering immensity of ether to where spiritual 
forms salute and beckon and smile ; not so much at 
the beauty of the human face as at the divinity 
that exalts and ennobles the countenances of the 
pure ; not so much at anything with eyes of flesh as 
at everything with spiritual vision that sees in every 
object a divine purpose, and in its abstract existence 
the beautiful conception of God. 



CHAPTER X 

Bring Me Back 
My Image 



CHAPTEE X 



BEING ME BACK MY IMAGE 



Among the rabbinical legends there is a tradition 
that when fallen man was driven forth to till the 
ground he asked the angel at the gate : 

" What shall I bring back to God when I return? " 

And the angel said: " Bring Him back the face 
He gave yon in the Garden, and I will let you in. " 

And as he retreated from the place, still look- 
ing, longing, yearning with the exquisite agony of 
earth's first sorrow, there appeared above the walls 
the seraphim of song, chanting : 

"Bring Him back the divine look He dowered 
you with in Eden, and you shall enter in." 

But in his gaze there was questioning and despair : 
"How can 1% How can I now, for I am fallen? " 

But the seraphim chant on: "To the ends of the 
world we will follow, follow you, and with flaming 
sword will guard the doorways of your soul. " 

And in the midst of them was the very face he 
was fashioned like, and a voice said: "Go, and re- 
fashion that God-like face in your Paradise Lost, 
and I will receive and glorify it in your Paradise 
Kegained." 

And forever and forever the Infinite Perfections 
unto the souls of men are crying : 

"Bring me back my image! " 

And forever and forever out of the deep oracles 
of life something in the soul of man replies : 

"I will! I will!" 

75 



1 ' The finer 
the instru- 
ment the 
lighter the 
touch to 
vibrate it." 
Annie 
Payson 
Call 



76 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



i i Learn from 
the rhyme 
that now 
shall come to 
thee what 
fits thy love 
most lov- 
iingly." 

Sidney 
Lanier 



Among the desert sands of Arabia there is an 
oasis valley devoted to the cultivation of sweet- 
scented shrubs and spices. And no matter how far 
the dwellers there may wander from that valley, 
the odors still linger about them. So, however 
widely man may depart from ideal perfection, how- 
ever far he may stray into desert and jungle, the 
perfume of the violets of Eden is still upon him. 
The instinct of perfection has followed him through 
all the ages, and to-day the divine ideals are his, 
whether they be smothered beneath his passions or 
borne skyward on his faith. 

"The mother knelt at her baby's cot, and as she 
prayed the voices of angels mingled with her own 
utterances. The first angel said: 'I am Health; 
whomsoever I touch shall never know pain. ' 

"And the second angel said: 'I am Wealth; 
whomsoever I touch shall never know want. ' 

"And the third angel said: 'I am Fame; whom- 
soever I touch shall be renowned. ' 

" And the fourth angel said : 'I am Power; whom- 
soever I touch shall have dominion. ' 

" And the fifth angel said : e I am Wisdom ; whom- 
soever I touch shall have knowledge. ' 

"And the sixth angel said: 'I am Love; whom- 
soever I touch shall win the world's affections.' 

"And the seventh angel said: 'I am none of 
these ; whomsoever I touch shall have high ideals. ' 

"And the mother with outstretched arms ex- 
claimed : 'O you, you of the high ideals, touch my 
child!'" 

And this is but an echo of the universal yearn- 
ing pleading everywhere for that transcendent 
beauty of spirit which God created to abide in 
that other transcendent beauty of face and form. 
There is something in every man to show that God 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 77 



has never turned him loose. The capacity for ideal 
thinking is the promise of evolution, and the loftier 
the life the finer the qualities it attracts to itself and 
gives out to others. 

Our ideals, according as they are high or low, 
are mighty to transform the features into beauty or 
deformity. Conceptions of perfect being grasped 
and held with life-like and life-long tenacity are 
great illuminators of countenance and refiners of 
body. They rebuke the lower self and exalt the 
higher in proportion as they are approximations of 
perfect living. " Beauty exists for the same reason 
that the beautiful object exists. " It is the final 
ideal of the Creative Mind. Perfected manhood, 
perfected womanhood, perfect in mind, soul, and 
body — these are the only conceptions ultimately 
worthy of faith and hope and aspiration. 

In his ideals a man may bury his divinity till the 
worm will crawl upon it and the moth will settle 
over it. In his ideals a man may rise till, like the 
gods of old on their coronation day, he will stand 
so high that earthly crowns can be laid only at his 
feet. 

Something good is the eventual purpose of 
every life, whether that good be of high or of low 
degree, relative or absolute. It may be purely 
selfish, but it is invariably consonant with the moral 
stage of development attained by the individual. 
It may be simply to eat and drink and die like the 
swine, but it is still in keeping with the ideals of 
the animal life that seeks and finds satisfaction in 
the senses only. Such earthiness smells of the 
clay. 

What is that final attainment to which you are 
looking and for which you are longing and labor- 
ing? Is it low? If so, you are dooming your face 



i * We may 
become gods 
walking 
above the 
flesh." 

Athanasius 



78 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



" To live 

poetry is 

better than 

to write 

poetry." 

John 

Stuart 

Blackie 



to a low order of beauty. " In whatsoever mood 
you set your mind does your spirit receive of un- 
seen substance in correspondence with that mood." 
This unseen substance passes readily and rapidly 
and surely from spirit into form. ~No human skill 
can circumvent the divine canon of correspondence. 

A high ideal, like "The Great Stone Face," is the 
foe of hypocrisy and the inspiration of sincerity. 
It builds with the precision of a master -mechanic. 
Whatever you consciously cling to as a life -convic- 
tion will inevitably impart its form and color to 
your physiognomy. Your ideals, beginning some- 
where in your ancestry, and delivered unto you as 
a temperamental inheritance when you entered the 
world, began to individualize you with your first 
intelligent desire. "While your ideals may have 
changed many times, they all form a part of your 
life and expression at this moment. 

This morning held the history of every morning 
gone — the sunrises and the matin songs. This 
evening holds the gray shapes and phantoms of 
every foregone twilight. So, gathered into your 
life and face, are all your thoughts, feelings, and 
emotions from babyhood to this hour. More than 
this : sweeping down the centuries are the impulses 
of heredity, and they, too, in so far as you have 
allowed them to operate, become apparent in your 
being. 

But the redeeming truth of science is, that if you 
trace your genealogy back far enough your original 
archetype is God. Here rests the divine descent 
of man. You can not fortify against the physical 
effects of the law of correspondence. No man can 
cheat his inner life by projecting spurious forms 
upon the world. No man can defraud God with 
the surreptitious mold of sainthood. Your ideals 



BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 79 



ought to be the loftiest visions which your faith can 
hold out before you. They ought to rise like liv- 
ing glories as high as you can see — on and on, be- 
yond where you can think, on to where creatures 
of intuition lure and beckon and companionize. 
These airy images have substance in them — and 
fingers which, as they caress your features, impart 
a higher order of loveliness to your countenance. 

The records of crime in the daily press are dis- 
couraging. It is difficult to restrain the rising con- 
viction of pessimism injected into our reflections by 
the cumulative testimony of thief and robber, ruffian 
and debauchee, libertine and murderer. But their 
deeds, as we see them, are not the real horrors that 
should send the chill of alarm into our conscious- 
ness. They are but the external proofs of the vil- 
lainy in the shadowy places of the soul. Beyond 
these outward atrocities honesty has been bush- 
whacked, virtue has been despoiled, conscience has 
been sandbagged, selfhood has been plundered, and 
the inner light has been well-nigh extinguished. 
Beyond these physical manifestations of depravity 
is the gleaming of spiritual daggers, the muffled 
tread of purposes that would not be heard. Eed- 
der than blood are the elfish fingers that lay hold 
upon the throat of human will and choke the affec- 
tions into utter strangulation. Paler than death 
are the nitro -glycerine thoughts of anarchy set be- 
neath the finest sensibilities and exploded under the 
parliament of faith and love and honor. 

The features are the faithful witnesses of the 
seismic violence within. But no rational judgment 
can pause with its verdict pronounced upon the 
physical only. Smiting down the body is a small 
matter alongside the massacre of the spirit's guards. 
The nation shrieks when the President is slain. 



" Put out the 
light, and 
then — put 
out the 
light." 

Othello 



80 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



' ' They have 
refused cor- 
rection, they 
have made 
their faces 
harder than 
a rock." 

Jeremiah 



The civilized world weeps with America when her 
chief executive falls at the deadly aim of the homi- 
cide. But the most horrible tragedy of the ages is 
the assassination of the soul's ideals — the breaking 
of faith with one's personal integrity. The most 
appalling degeneracy in all of life is the engulfing 
of the divine attributes by the senses till the body 
holds the only good of being. No Cimmerian mid- 
night is so black as the eclipse of spirit whose sooty 
denseness of vision, adjusted only to darkness, is 
blinded all the more when it faces the sun of moral 
illumination. Here lie the wrecks of the divinest 
creations. 

You can estimate men and women everywhere as 
you estimate the Acropolis and the Forum — by the 
magnificence of their ruins. There are graves 
deeper than the catacombs. There is desolation 
more desolate than the charnel-house of kings. 
Graves where manhood is entombed; mausoleums 
where womanhood is buried. What splendor is 
fallen sometimes, yea, always, when men and women 
go down — men and women who, like Babylon, erect 
their hanging gardens nourished more out of the 
sky than from the earth, and yet where, instead of 
flowers of perennial bloom and fruitage of con- 
tinued rejuvenescence, flourish the ashen lilies of 
Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Men sometimes stoop so low that they can see 
nothing but their own bodies, till they can want 
nothing outside of beastly desire, till they can not 
worship but in defilement of life's altars. Stand 
erect and expand your horizon. Look outward 
and upward. "A narrow man seldom sees the 
sky. " Keep out of the debris of being, or you will 
assimilate its garbage. Hold your vision upon 
things "which the vulture's eye hath not seen. n 



BUILDEBS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 81 



" There is no atheism so terrible as the absence of 
an ultimate ideal." " Better not exist than guiltily 
disappoint the high purposes of being." 

Pure ideality is the only basis upon which the 
real can ever securely rest. Every human soul as 
an abstract existence is a compact with Deity for 
God-like manifestation wherever it weds itself to 
materiality. You may not write poetry, but you 
can so live that your prosiest word may fall in 
rhythm upon the ears that hear you. You may 
not chisel marble, but you can make your own 
body in some ways rival and in others surpass the 
Apollo Belvidere or the Yenus de Medici. You 
may not compose as did Grieg and Mozart, but you 
can fill the world about you with grander harmonies 
than theirs. You may not prophesy as did Isaiah, 
but in soul and body you may become the fulfil- 
ment of prophecy — the incarnation of the Word 
that was spoken in the beginning that you shall 
walk up and down this earth as the beautiful image 
of God. 

6 



"Let the 
beauty of the 
Lord our 
God be upon 
us." 

Psalm xc. 17 



CHAPTER XI 

The Invisible the 
Mother of the 
Visible 



CHAPTER XI 

THE INVISIBLE THE MOTHER OF THE VISIBLE 

Evolution of mind is also evolution of body. 

Growth is the law of being — growth in spirit and 

growth of body. When the physical reaches its 

full animal growth, it is ready for spiritual mani- : 

festations of higher order. " The expansion of a 

thought is the widening of manhood. " Growth in . 13 ?, 

& & service all 

spirit is the promise of God of the infinite progres- physical and 
sion of our faculties. When the body has reached psychic en- 
its usual stature, it is thereafter supplied with those dowments." 
elements which, if properly directed and conserved, 
must give constant, if not eternal, rejuvenescence. ===== 

Man is the only creature of culture. The lower 
animals never educate themselves. The dog, the 
cat, the horse, the seal, the elephant, the pigeon, 
and even the hog, may be trained by a master, but 
they never train themselves. Left alone, the brute 
never grows into ideals. He is never more than he 
always was. Through the ages his face does not 
change except to conform to the requirements of 
utility — never toward the ideal, never toward the 
beautiful. Nor do his works advance, nor his crea- 
tions improve. 

The sparrow builds her nest with marvelous skill, 
but she built it the same way in the primeval for- 
ests. The bee constructs her cell with surpassing 
ingenuity, but she fashioned it the same way in the 
hollow trees of Eden. The nightingale and the 
lark sing with entrancing sweetness, but they 

85 



86 BUILDEES OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Foster the 
beautiful, 
and every 
hour thou 
callest new 
flowers to 
birth." 

Schiller 



use only the same notes with which they greeted 
the dawn in Paradise. Only man passes from the 
realms of utility in its coarsest phases into the 
sphere of the beautiful in its finest forms. Doing 
this in mind and soul, he also grows into lovelier 
graces in his body. It was this faculty of evolution 
that led him from the cave and the dugout to the 
villa and the palace. Becoming more lovely with- 
in, he looked upon his external correspondences and 
found them refined in proportion to the quality of 
his thought and feeling. 

In every life are animal instincts for the animal 
plane of being. They require but little intelligence, 
since they are practically automatic and involun- 
tary in their operations. They appertain to the 
earthy nature. They are aggressive, insistent in 
the preservation and perpetuation of kind. They 
prevail with equal inhesion in man and brute. 
They are found in the lowest orders of existence — 
in the unicellular organism, and even beyond it. 
Ministering to the physical constitution only, in all 
genera they form the basis for continued union of 
the animating principle with organized matter. 
They belong in the category of utilities as brick and 
mortar in a building. In themselves, the bricks 
are not beautiful, but they are the foundation for 
the finished architecture. A plain beam, unpol- 
ished and rough-hewn, would support its share of 
any structure, but its crudeness would reflect upon 
architect and builder. A collocation of them might 
sustain the corridors of the capitol, but they would 
vouch for a higher civilization if they bore the 
fluted and carved graces of the Corinthian column. 

Four bare walls do not make a civilized house. 
There must be ventilation, light, and inner belong- 
ings, not only for comfort but for possible occu- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 87 



pancy. Even then the structure cannot bear the 
appearance of home till a living intelligence enters 
it to set the room in order and fill its atmosphere 
with companionable presences. 

The same elements of nutrition that make a 
man's body might also make a swine's body. The 
differentiation begins when a divine consciousness 
takes possession and asserts supremacy over its or- 
ganized physical realm. Whoever subordinates 
these differentiating qualities to the senses and in- 
stincts that belong alike to all physical organisms 
of whatsoever order, gravitates away from the cen- 
ters of higher attraction, breaks fellowship with 
his tutelary divinities, and gradually approximates 
the look of beasts. 

" We build from within; we attract from with- 
out." " The body is the soul's interpreter." "Moral 
obliquity dulls and deadens the features. " Spirit- 
ual equanimity gives poise of body and serenity of 
expression. Everything that enters consciousness 
from two worlds becomes the conjoint property of 
soul and body, and as it affects the one, so does it 
affect the other. Truth, in itself, is abstract ; but 
whenever it enters the human mind it begins at 
once to take concrete form in the human body. 
Environment and the impact of other personalities 
are mighty forces in fashioning character, just as 
character is a mighty force in fashioning its physi- 
cal architecture. 

But environment and the intellectual cognitions 
relative to them are not all. " Man is as great by 
heart as by reason." His intuitions are greater 
than his intellectual conceptions, and all these ex- 
periences, whether mental or supersensible, seek 
eternally for appropriate forms without. The only 
reason why different objects and animals and even 



"Perverted 
emotions and 
morbid im- 
aginings 
play havoc 
with the 
mental and 
physical 
powers." 

Emily 
Bishop 



88 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



* 'A man's 
look is the 
work of 
years; it 
draws from 
all of life." 

Hazlitt 









men have different organisms and configurations is 
that different forms or qualities of spirit animate 
and fashion them. 

Everywhere "the invisible is the mother of the 
visible. " The silent songs you sing ; the reveries 
that come you know not how, and go you know 
not where ; the anthems that break forth in the 
cloisters of your meditations ; the invisible, beauti- 
ful pictures your fancy paints for you ; the domes 
and spires, the towers and minarets you raise toward 
the sky in your dreaming ; the altars you dedicate 
and the thrones you erect in the holy of holies of 
your life ; the sighs that tremble along the arch- 
ways of your being ; the prayers you utter and the 
longings you cannot utter — all these enter into your 
muscle to beautify it and your face to ennoble 
it. 

The envyings you indulge ; the ingratitude you 
exhibit; the revenge you satisfy; the vengeance 
you wreak ; the hatred you nurse ; the cruelty you 
impose; the uncharitableness you dispense; the 
judgments you judge; the virtues you despoil ; the 
unkindly words you coin ; the frowns you shape ; 
the selfishness you cherish ; the jealousies you har- 
bor; the doubts you entertain; the faith you 
blight ; the ideals you murder — all these inoculate 
you with their virus and break into eruptions in 
your face. 

We grow like the thoughts we think. If they 
are the thoughts of demons, then like demons shall 
we one day appear. If of angels, then like angels 
shall we become. If we think our thoughts after 
God, then "we shall be like Him and see Him as 
He is." 

Evil thoughts are swords of anger to disfigure, 
maces of hatred to bruise, stings of malice to poi- 



Waldo 
Emerson 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 89 

son, catapults of deformity to batter us down. No- 
ble thoughts are the angels of the Most High ca- 
ressing the features and inspiriting the body till 
it seeks conformity with the divine pattern. No 
beauty of face can stand unmarred against the — 

spoliation of an evil spirit. No Erebus of counte- "Tell them, 
nance can remain unillumined while the glory of a dear, if eyes 
lofty soul is beaming through it. were made 

It was said of Keats, the beautiful, that his face ° r se ® n 

then beauty 
glowed perpetually as if a divine effulgence were is its own 

quivering upon it. Why? Because he had lived excuse for 
among visions of transcendent loveliness until their being." 
beauty had got into his blood, and through his cir- 
culation had bloomed like Eden's roses upon his 
cheeks. 

Dean Swift was so great that when he died a con- 
temporary said of him that it seemed like an em- 
pire falling. And yet, with all his greatness, he 
lacked just a little of being truly and profoundly 
great. Take "r" out of " friend, " and you have 
"fiend." Take from character a single small ele- 
ment, or inject into it an infinitesimal foreign 
quality, and you have changed it essentially. In 
his earlier life the Dean's face was hopeful, sunny, 
buoyant, gentle, loving. Later, his ambitions and 
their disappointments settled upon his heart the 
shadow of misanthropy. His thoughts were dag- 
gers whose edges were antimony and whose points 
were tipped with prussic acid. His words were 
Mauser cartridges exploding in the ears of his 
victims. More than any other man in England did 
he possess and use the vocabulary of scorn, hatred, 
and revenge. The bitterness and spite, the rancor 
and acrimony that curdled in his blood stuccoed 
his face with evil forms. It was said that the 
morning glories would wither if the acerbity of his 



90 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Build thee 
more stately 
mansions, O 
my soul, . . . 
leaving 
thine out- 
grown shell 
by life's un- 
resting sea." 
Oliver 
Wendell 
Holmes 



features fell upon them. And yet he had not put 
out the light ; he had simply turned it low. 

" Every man has a better man within him " if you 
can only woo him out. The veriest tramp has a 
poem in him somewhere if you can only set the 
measures moving rhythmically. The poorest vaga- 
bond has a symphony in him somewhere if you can 
only touch the keys and start the harmonies into 
vibration. Upon the most beastly human visage 
there rests the survival of divinity. 

The manifesto of creation, unaltered through all 
the ages, is still an operative statute in life, that the 
divine is imperishable in essence and autocratic in 
actualizing itself in such organism as it may inhabit. 
It is the prerogative of every man to plan the 
architecture of the house he lives in, to design 
the temple he worships in. Outer conformity is the 
canon that vouches for the truth or the falsity, the 
nobility or the degeneracy, of the inner life. 

The monks of the Middle Ages entered their 
priestly offices as beautiful specimens of purity of 
heart and loveliness of face. But " the descent into 
Avernus is easy. " With many of them the prosti- 
tution of their divine commission to the service of 
sensuality and greed, where the shameless traffic of 
indulgences debauched the heart of the world, and 
where luxurious living mingled blood with the wine 
of their feasts, transformed the oracles of God into 
sacerdotal blasphemies, while their features and 
their bodies were incarnations of degeneracy. Alas 
for our faces when the affections of the soul sink 
into the passions of the body ! 



CHAPTER XII 

Function Accord- 
ing to Form and 
Form According 

to Use 



CHAPTEE XII 

FUNCTION ACCORDING TO FORM AND FORM 
ACCORDING TO USE 



The only thing that culture can not do is to 
change the genus. There is no quality of texture, 
form, or motion which it may not refine. 

You can not take a thistle and develop it into a 
rose, but you can take the wild single -leaf rose of 
the forest and develop it into an American Beauty 
or a Marechal Niel. You can not take a wolf and 
develop him into a fawn, but you can take the 
Mexican lobo and develop him into a St. Bernard. 
You can not take the savage and develop him into 
an angel, but under the mysterious processes of 
evolution you can give him the finely textured body 
and the Godlike appearing of a man. The lowest 
savage, after all, is the savage of civilization. 

Man is composed of but two things : matter and 
mind. In proper relation they make a perfect 
man. Anything out of balance makes an imperfect 
man ; for it is certain that all your imperfections 
contend with all your perfections for a share of ex- 
pression in your face. If the animal predominates 
within, it must also predominate without. If the 
spiritual reigns within, it must also reign without. 
Every face, therefore, that departs from the divine 
look becomes animal in its expression. There is 
nothing else for it to become. If the animal takes 
possession, there is nothing higher for it to be than 
animal. And, strangely enough, which is to say 



"For soul in- 
herits all 
that soul 
could dare : 
Yea, man- 
hood hath a 
wider span 
and larger 
privilege of 
life than 
man." 

James 

Russe/f 

Lowell 



94 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"A beautiful 
soul seeks 
always and 
only an 
equally 
beautiful 
body." 

Plato 



naturally enough, the face takes the likeness of the 
beast whose characteristics are prominent in the 
individual. Why? Because everywhere "func- 
tion is according to form and form is according to 
use." The cannibal's face, even in his pleasantest 
moods, is always horrifying to the civilized be- 
holder. His eye is cold, keen, homicidal ; his fea- 
tures are animal, thick-set, ferocious; his teeth 
are large, protruding, carniverous ; his incisors are 
sunk into the symphysis of the jaw like a dog's. 
His more cultured brother cannot look upon him 
without a shudder ; and the reason for his fear is 
based upon the interpretation of dangerous spiritual 
qualities exhibited in the physiognomy. 

Facial likenesses to beasts in our civilization are 
almost as common as among savages. Apicius, 
the Eoman cormorant, was thoroughly swinish in 
expression. He was an exaggerated type of the 
"vomitorium" of Eoman gluttony. George Law 
was called the bulldog, his physiognomy and his 
temper betraying his canine nature. General Na- 
pier was like the eagle, inwardly and outwardly. 
Charles Fleming was a vulture in appearance and 
habits. Eichelieu was called the Old Fox, his crafty 
countenance and cunning practises in every con- 
spiracy from Sweden to the Barbary coasts justify- 
ing the sobriquet. Eobespierre resembled the cat, 
and with characteristic feline ferocity he tore his 
victims as a tiger would tear them. 

But we need not search history for examples to 
demonstrate that brute passions make men resemble 
the beasts noted for such passions. Look about you. 
Some faces exhibit the stubbornness of the mule ; 
some the meekness of the lamb ; some the stolid- 
ness of the ox ; some the bold front of the lion ; 
some the timorous look of the hare : some the cun- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 95 



ning of the fox; some the cynicism of the hyena; 
some the bleared countenance of the owl; some 
the soulfulness of the gazelle; some the seeming of 
a demon; some the majesty of a god; some the 
physiognomy of the donkey, and some have retained 
his ears and his voice. Wherever you find these 
likenesses, they are the signs of animal domi nancy 
somewhere in the life, and, if cultivated and con- 
tinued, the expression more and more approximates 
the look of the beast whose ruling instincts prevail 
in the individual. 

Perhaps the most notable, as also the most pitia- 
ble, example of bestial degeneracy in the history of 
the whole world is that of the wild boy of Hamelin, 
found in the forests of Hartzwald, Hanover. He 
crawled on his all -fours like a quadruped, ate leaves 
and grass like a sheep, climbed trees like a monkey, 
exercising in a most extraordinary degree the in- 
stinct of self-preservation which, however, had ab- 
sorbed and physicalized all his being. Lost from 
the social impingement of his kind, and compan- 
ioning with wild beasts, the law of association broke 
down his personality, and animalized both soul 
and body, leaving him scarcely recognizable as a 
human shape. 

But the lost man in our civilization is more pitia- 
ble still in the wreck of character and in the physi- 
cal degeneracy that accompanies this. The crown- 
ing act of fiendish and ghoulish diabolism is for a 
man to dig open the grave and filch jewels from dead 
fingers or gold from the casket where the body lies. 
Such characters have the faces of demons incarnate. 
But what shall we say of those spiritual freebooters 
who snatch jewels of virtue from living fingers and 
pearls of honor from living palms? Who rob life 
of its fruitage and life's vintage of its wine? 



" People 

ruled by 

gloomy 

moods at- 
tract to 

themselves 

gloomy 

things." 

Ralph 
Waldo 
Emerson 



96 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

What shall we say of those vandals who, in the 

shadows of personal vice and in the moldy caverns 

of self -pollution, dishonor the body with foul uses? 

_ — who, like self- destroying vampires, suck the 

' ' One world D ^ 00( ^ °^ the sou ^ leaving the ghost of manhood and 

is away and the specter of womanhood stalking about the earth 

by far the in search of their murdered divinity ? What shall 

largest to we say of those who deem nothing sacred in all 

me, and that their bei butj jn their debauc h e d carnality, fill 

is mvsslf " 

the Holy Grail of life with the wormwood and the 
Whitman S a ^> an d> when the spirit is an hungered, sprinkle 
— its lips with the Dead Sea's fruit of ashes? What 
shall we say of those whose lusts dim the eye, 
whose bestiality slopes back the forehead, whose 
inhumanity veils "the upward looking and the 
light ?" — who leave only heaps of broken stones 
and fragments of crushed sanctuaries where God's 
temple stood? 

Again and again we say: Alas for our faces 
when the affections of the soul sink into the pas- 
sions of the body ! 






CHAPTER XIII 
The Trysting 
Place of 
Mortality and 
Immortality 



"fr 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE TRYSTING- PLACE OF MORTALITY AND 
IMMORTALITY 

We must know that there is eternal enmity be- 
tween vulgar thinking and a beautiful exterior. _ ^^^^^^ 
Beyond their immediate uses, the physical and its 
belongings have no intrinsic value in themselves. bod the in _ 

"If man were not a spiritual being, his animality dividual soul 

would be scarcely worth having." God wo aid not holds itself 

have made the body alone. He was not a mere a P art f rom 

modeler in mud. In the divine economy there was 

Moses 
no use for a statue of clay. It must have not only True 

form, but animation, the one appearing as the sym- Brown 

bol and servant of the soul, the other as the image ■ 

of God. 

The body is the sanctuary of the soul. It is the 
trysting-place between mortality and immortality. 
All through the physical being the spirit records its 
general character, but the face reveals its subtler 
secrets. It not only bears the material form which 
distinguishes the vertical physiognomy of man from 
the horizontal profile of the beast, but it holds the 
most delicate transcripts of the soul. " It is every- 
where the inner attitude that is consequential. " 
Owing to the number of expressional agents in the 
face, and to their wonderful mobility and sensitive- 
ness to the nerves that act upon them, more rapidly 
than any other part of the body do the features re- 
spond to ethereal qualities of spirit. 

"Ye are the temple of God." The animal is the 
99 

LefC. 






1 ' Beauty is 
that reason 
itself which 
presides at 
the creation 
of things." 

Francois 
Delsarte 



100 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

lower story; the spiritual is the upper story. If 
passious buru down-stairs, aff ectious will be burned 
up-stairs. The serpeuts are beueath us; the angels 
are above us. Whoever dwells continually on the 
ground floor will become more and more like the 
inanimate clay and the creeping things that drone 
and cringe upon it. A man can stoop so low that 
his most pleasing sensation will be contact with the 
earth, till he assimilates the qualities and the like- 
ness of the things that crawl. 

The man who looks upward sees the swing of 
Pleiades and the haze of the Milky Way, and, los- 
ing himself in the vast blue calm of infinitude, 
draws peace from beyond the stars. The earth- 
mind willingly merges itself into the divine mind, 
the spiritual eclipses the mortal eye, meditations 
become apocalyptic, faith sings through all the be- 
ing: " God's in His Heaven; all's right with the 
world." 

Association with these things in our gazing and 
our dreams, in our speculations and our philosophy, 
in our religion and our experiences, makes them 
holy for the exalted use we give them. All things 
both fine and common, remote and near by, that we 
touch with soul or body take on a certain value for 
their service. The stars that wink at us nightly 
become dear for their friendliness. The breezes 
that caress our cheeks and then are gone forever 
carry our blessings with them. The old wagon 
that conveys us on our rocky way up the mountain, 
through canon and gorge, and finally unloads us at 
our gold mine, somehow gathers a charm about it- 
self as we go. The horse that earns our bread in 
the treadmill, the dog that defends life or property, 
the kitten that entertains us with its playful moods 
and graces of motion, the bird that sings despite its 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 101 



imprisonment — all have a value for the uses we 
make of them. How infinitely above them tower 
the values of the soul in its occupation with tran- 
scendental attributes ! 

Service quickens affection. Not the service of a 
slave, but the service of eternal fitness in the inani- 
mate and the service of love in the living. Asso- 
ciation makes the body holy to the soul. The 
house you spent your childhood in is sacred in your 
memory; the trees you played under, the spring 
you drank from, the lanes you scampered through, 
the fields you roamed over, the schoolhouse where 
you learned your alphabet, the village streets you 
wandered about, the brook that sang for you, the 
meadow that bloomed for you, the orchard that 
opened its apple-blossoms for you, the vanished 
clouds God painted for you, the church you knelt 
in, the churchyard where sleep your dead — all these 
are sweet in memory, and they ought to be, but no 
earthly thing can be so holy to your soul as the 
body it has tenanted, as this temple of the spirit's 
priesthood, as the physical altars where the mate- 
rial was wed to the immaterial and the common 
grew up into the divine. As you would resent any 
desecration of the old homestead, with a thousand- 
fold more courage and zeal should you defend the 
palace of the soul. 

"Beauty exists only in fragments." Every per- 
son, as also every nation, has gathered and pre- 
served only certain surviving elements of loveli- 
ness, or has attained only in part the full heritage 
of life. It has been said that the perfect beauty 
should have her head from Greece, her feet from 
Hindustan, her shoulders from Italy, her hands 
and complexion from England. Mention is not 
made as to where she must obtain the psychic quali- 
L.ofC. 



"The soul is 

form and 

doth the 

body make." 
Edmund 
Spenser 



102 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Any noble- 
ness begins 
at once to 
refine the 
features ; 
sensuality to 
imbrute 
them." 

Henry 
David 
Thoreau 



ties that fashion the perfections of form, whether 
it be beside the Ganges or beyond the Alps. Like 
Lytton's Wanderer we search in vain all countries 
for the desire of the heart, and come home to find 
that we have it within us all the while. 

We rarely discover even an approximation of 
perfect beauty in all the features. Canova, while 
carving his statue of Yenus, had more than sixty 
women to sit as models, drawing from each some 
peculiar charm or grace not found in any of the 
others. For his Helen, Zeuxis took his final con- 
ception from the heads of five different maidens, 
each furnishing her quota but lacking in some 
esseutial. Here is a love-lit eye, but the lip is 
curled in scorn. Here is a pretty mouth, but the 
eye has malignity in it. Here is a fine forehead, 
but the jaw is brutal. Here is an almost classic 
face, but there are barbaric moods beneath it. 
Something, sometime, somewhere, has left the trail 
of the serpent upon all mortality. Everywhere are 
the apples of Istakhar. 

But there is more beauty than ugliness in this old 
world. Indeed, there is beauty in our imperfec- 
tions — in the hints of what we may be and the 
prophecies of what we shall be. Furthermore, ugli- 
ness is not inherent ; it is incidental and perishable, 
while beauty is intrinsic and imperishable. It may 
be marred, but not obliterated. And yet, it still re- 
mains that, while there is beauty in our imperfec- 
tions, there is ugliness in the midst of our perfec- 
tions. 

Among all possible blemishes of physiognomy 
what are the evidences in your countenance? Is 
your face empty and vapid? Cultivate the reason- 
ing faculties. "Mental brightness makes facial 
illumination." No intellectual flippancy can make 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 103 



the features radiant. No mental lazzarone ever 
presented a charming exterior. An expressionless 
doll-face is one back of which there is poor psychic 
illumination. 

Is your face dull and common? Think some- 
thing fine and uncommon, and the polish will begin 
to appear. Is your face animal and brutal ? Live 
less among the fleshly instincts, and woo the spirit- 
ual forces till they caress you into fellowship with 
themselves. 

Is your face vulgar and blasphemous? Bathe it 
in the sunlight of pure thinking, give it the mas- 
sage of holy aspirations, the cosmetics of faith and 
love and prayer, and the obscene lineaments will 
soften and sweeten like your thoughts. Is your 
face skeptical and irreverent 1 ? "Be still, and know 
that God is. " Let the divinest moods come upon 
you ; yield to the entreaties of infinite perfections, 
and a higher life will set its stamp upon lip and 
cheek and eye. 

Is your face unfeeling, malicious? "Question 
your soul in the presence of beauty " : " What right 
have I to hate any man?" "Vengeance is mine, 
I will repay. " Is your face coarse, sensualized ? 
Call upon the might and majesty of your Godlike 
spirit to assert themselves, and to demonstrate in 
you the divine pedigree of man. Draw near to 
Him through the touch of whose garment virtue will 
pass to cast out the lustful devils that possess you. 
Battle and strive, and conquer passion with affec- 
tion, and your features will make haste to reveal 
the victory. 

Is your face gluttonous. Eat less of pork and 
pastry; partake more of the emblematic broken 
body and shed blood of the Master, and your coun- 
tenance will become the swift messenger of the 



u Every ex- 
ternal form 
is the sign of 
an internal 
quality." 
De la S art he 






104 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

revolution. Is your face mammonized? Let the 
Christ come in and drive the money-changers out 
of the Temple. Melt into coin your idols of silver 
and gold ; send them about over the earth doing 
good, and your miserly look will broaden into one 
of charity and nobility. " Beauty honors all who 

thy body are intelligent enough to comprehend it and pure 

hence, and enough to love it." 

more thy 

grace." 

Shakespeare 



CHAPTER XIV 

Humanity the 
Subject and the 
Object of All Art 



CHAPTEE XIV 

HUMANITY THE SUBJECT AND THE OBJECT 
OF ALL ART 



Intelligence is necessary to a beautiful coun- 
tenance; and yet high intellectuality with low 
ideals is a sad thing for the human face as for the 
human soul. 

Eead Marie Corelli's "The Sorrows of Satan." 
The Prince is a polished, regal personage ; but be- 
neath the fashionable tailoring are the scales, and 
down in the patent-leather pumps are the cloven 
hoofs. Mephistopheles is a cultured devil, but a 
devil all the more for his culture. With diaboli- 
cal scheming he invades home and heart, temple 
and altar, and lays waste the finest possessions of 
earth. All misguided force is evil. 

Intellectual culture is not all of culture. The 
Greek had this in marvelous perfection, but the one 
thing that marred Greek art and Greek develop- 
ment was the lack of the spiritual elements of life. 
Neither the Spartan nor the Athenian could think 
without a contemplation of physical counterparts. 
"The soul that stops to contemplate its wings will 
never rise." The very gods of Greece were deifica- 
tions of mortal attributes — " beings of clay strength, 
of human passion, foul, fierce, changeful, of pene- 
trable arms, of vulnerable flesh," not of Godlike 
spirit. 

Delaage shows that the Greeks did not attain to 
that beauty reached by the Christians later. He 
107 



"He was 
uglier than 
he had any 
business to 
be." 

Bulwer 

Lytton 



108 BUILDERS OF TILE BEAUTIFUL 



<< If that is 
not God, at 
least it's His 
first cousin." 
The Dying 
Mirabeau 



also shows that the beauty of a people is greatly 
modified by their conceptions of Deity and the 
form and character of their worship. The tribes 
of Africa, shooting their arrows into the storm- 
cloud against a physical deity, or throwing their 
babies into the Mle to appease an angered god, 
represent low types of religion and miserable fa- 
cial correspondences. The Christian nations are 
the most beautiful in all the world, and, while the 
faith of the Greek as illustrated in Anchises was 
sincere, and while as a people they may have been 
"a law unto themselves," nevertheless Zeus was but 
an enlarged and idealized man, Minerva but an 
etherealized woman. 

The poets of Greece, altho more than her states- 
men or philosophers did they interpret the heart 
and soul of their country, never speak of moral 
sentiments, as such, revolutionizing the life or re- 
flected in the countenance. They boast of agility 
of foot, beauty of limb, fleetness in the stadium, 
skill in the arena, whiteness of shoulder and firm- 
ness of flesh, proportion, symmetry, and relation 
of parts, but not of psychic graces made manifest 
in physical correspondences. Greece furnished no 
models for the head of Christ, and yet at the time 
of the Savior Athens had seen her glory, and the 
polish of the centuries was in the blood of the 
Hellenic descendants. 

The Greek forehead was rather low and flat, like 
the front of Greek temples. One of the most strik- 
ing physical effects of the Christian religion was the 
changing of the facial contour, more clearly to sym- 
bolize the spiritual faculties that became dominant 
— especially noticeable in the raising of the fore- 
head to the arched form in analogy with the vault 
ed domes and arcades of cathedral architecture. 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 109 



Greece esteemed men more than she esteemed her 
productions of literature, philosophy, and art. It 
was during this period that she brought forth her 
masters to teach the world. It was during this 
period that she lived her loftiest conceptions of 
being within, and manifested them in form, expres- 
sion, and movement. 

But to Greece there came a time when life was 
cheaper than art, and she could no longer create 
beauty with her hands, nor present it in her form, 
feature, or movement. And yet it must be remem- 
bered that even in Hellas ideal beauty grew vague 
and dim before the decadence of external beauty 
began. When Greece turned her eyes from man to 
worship the form of man, she lost her essential self 
in the materiality of her own greatness. External 
art flourished, but internal life withered. Marble 
held the divine lines of beauty, and canvas glowed 
with the matchless colorings of genius, but the mar- 
ble was bloodless, and the canvas was lifeless, and 
while they gazed upon these mere symbols and 
adored these mere emblems they forgot the invis- 
ible, intangible, intrinsic ideals of the masters. 
And here they lost the most delicate and subtle 
graces that ever rested upon the Grecian counte- 
nance. Humanity itself is the subject and the ob- 
ject of all art, whether that art be form or color, 
music or motion. Ideal manhood, ideal woman- 
hood, is at once the interpreter and the interpreta- 
tion of all culture — "man as the type, angels the 
prototype, God the archetype. " 

It is everywhere destructive of beauty for man to 
exalt his own creations above himself. No coun- 
tenance can be beautiful if its possessor lives and 
loves and worships among dead forms. As he 
must keep God greater than the creature, so must 



"The acrid 
humors 
breaking" out 
all over the 
surface of 
inan's life are 
only to be 
subdued by a 
gradual 
sweetening 
of the inward 
spirit." 

Henry 

Drummond 



110 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



1 'Animal 
radiations 
are inward 
and down- 
ward ; hu- 
man radia- 
tions are 
upward and 
outward." 

Moses 

True 

Brown 



he keep his own life above his own handiwork. 
He must regard "Moses greater than the Taber- 
nacle, Solomon greater than the Temple, David 
greater than his harp, Isaiah greater than his song, " 
Tennyson greater than his "In Memoriam," Shake- 
speare greater than his "Julius Caesar, " Michael 
Angelo greater than his "Pieta," Haydn greater 
than his "Creation/ 7 Spurgeon greater than his 
church, man himself greater than anything he pro- 
duces — everywhere spirit greater than its clay. 
Intelligent insistence upon the idea that spirit is 
the fashioning force, the dominating power, the 
occupant of a physical temple which it may build 
as it will and purify as it must, can not but exalt 
in exterior graces. 

With the Christian era came the final passing of 
both the body-worship of the Spartans and the 
exaltation of pure intellectuality among the Athe- 
nians. Nations and ages swept into wide extremes. 
Spiritual monopoly in the following centuries led 
to the religious asceticism of the Middle Ages, and 
thus to cruelty, autocracy, intolerance. Then came 
the shadows of intellectual and moral degeneracy 
that begloomed the earth for a thousand years. 
The highest products of mind and the holiest sac- 
raments of spiritual life were held for ten centuries 
in the ken of a few old schoolmen who kept the 
vestal fires burning through all that long dark pe- 
riod. So dense was the darkness that the citizens 
of the world forgot their own countenances, and 
when they began to emerge into the dawn of the 
Eeformation, they beheld their kith and kind look- 
ing different from their progenitors upon whom the 
twilight had first fallen. Humanity had swung to 
the other reach of the pendulum. During the in- 
tervening centuries the body had been neglected 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 111 



for the intellectual culture of the few, for the church 
devotion of the many, and finally for civil and 
religious freedom. 

Through all this shifting panorama the law of 
correspondence, operating upon all the known 
world, brought changes in bodily contour and facial 
expression to match the lights and shadows of his- 
tory. And, as the day-dawn of the Eeformation 
brightened and still brightens, these changes have 
gone on, and yet go on. The human anatomy has 
remained, to be sure ; but the expression has been 
variable in quality and quantity. There is a wide 
contrast between the look of the populace of the 
fourth century and that of the masses of the twen- 
tieth; between the physiognomy of the medieval 
monks and that of the ministers of this age ; be- 
tween the faces of Plato and Franklin; between 
the countenances of Herodotus and Gibbon; be- 
tween the fine frenzy in the eye of Homer and the 
majestic calm in that of Milton ; between the pier- 
cing gaze of Demosthenes and the awe-inspiring 
glance of Webster. 

There is a vast difference between a physiognomy 
of mere muscle and hide and a refined human coun- 
tenance. Common things can not possess this earth 
without marring it ; and, if the world as a whole 
ever becomes truly beautiful in outward manifesta- 
tion, it will be through the conservation of the 
divine life-forces that inhere within us all. We 
miss the glory of our existence by our secret mili- 
tary tactics. The grandest living is not of battle, 
but of peace. The surest triumphs come not so 
much of fighting evil as of wooing and winning 
the good. The abiding victories that set the face 
with majesty above the physical are not attained 
where men kill, but where they love. 



"All parts of 
the human 
face have 
their fixed 
relations to 
human 
character." 
Oliver 
Wendell 
Holmes 



112 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

We speak of the march of civilization, as if it 
were a parade of floats decorated with chrysanthe- 
mums and drawn by horses panoplied with roses. 
___________ ^ n( i this, too, as if it were a triumphal procession 

in honor of our superiority over our martial ances- 

„ tors in the art of murder. Man's one chance of im- 
is the law of 

life man is proving upon himself is not in modern war nor in 

not man as medieval chivalry, but in sending down the ages a 

yet." tide of Godlike impulses that shall endow with 

Robert grander character and nobler forms the beings who 

n ' ng have a right to be born well. 



CHAPTER XV 
The Mortal 
Rising Up Into 
the Immortal 



CHAPTEE XV 



THE MORTAL RISING UP INTO THE IMMORTAL 



Work is a great beautifier: not the thankless 
toil of the slave, nor the drudgery of the serf ; not 
the enforced hardships of poverty, nor the extrem- 
ity of the poor in spirit ; but toil dignified by noble 
purposes and sanctified in the uses to which it is 
devoted. " The world was not made for sluggards. " 
Earth is not a Castle of Indolence, where every 
sense is steeped in enervating delights, and where 
the enchanter presides to deprive his guests of free 
will and energy. 

Waiting a lifetime for another to toss him a for- 
tune or an opportunity, Micawber is a poor type 
of man. His flabby, spiritless anatomy betrays 
the qualities of his character and shows the physiog- 
nomy of a merely idle expectancy that never creates, 
but always consumes. No sluggard ever had an 
imposing countenance. In the hermetic books of 
Egypt all pain is said to be the result of activity. 
In the unsealed book of Nature it is written that 
inactivity is stagnation, and stagnation breeds 
death. It is said that the Sandwich Islander can 
lie down and die at will. We need to get up and 
live. 

Everywhere the world is seeking ease and acquir- 
ing disease. "Work and sympathy are two great 
essentials in making a beautiful countenance. " An 
unused faculty withers rapidly. In the dry up- 
lands of India the geese have forgotten how to 
115 



"What is 
lovely never 
dies; it 
passes into 
other loveli- 
ness." 

Thomas 

Bailey 

Aldrich 



116 BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 

swim, and they are losing their web feet. In the 
Dry Tortugas of life men forget the very points of 
the compass and lose the instinct of the nautilus 
for sailing. It was struggling Eome that con- 
2 quered, and her face was set with triumph. It was 



" All man's idle, voluptuous Eome that fell, and her face was 

actions are weak with the weakness of her character. "Better 

a day of strife than a century of sleep." It is 

resistance that makes the arc light, 
nim. 

Thomas The Patagonians are the biggest people in the 

Car/yle world. They sleep eighteen hours a day and doze 
* and dream the other six. They are not a beau- 

tiful people. Life's energies are absorbed into 
their corporeity. They are sluggish, stupid, mo- 
rose, phlegmatic, — nourished only through the 
stomach, starved for want of intellectual and spir- 
itual pabulum. Their faces are faithful symbols 
of their sloth — true clay models of their inertia — 
photogravures of their slumbering life -forces. 

And yet activity, to be productive of beauty, 
must be tempered with proper thinking and high 
purposes. Many deeds would lose their ugliness 
and their power to manufacture it if the right 
spirit could actuate the performer. It is not so 
much what you do as the motive and the manner 
of the doing. The motive determines always the 
moral status of an action, tho it must be said that 
we are responsible for our motives. A right pur- 
pose could not redeem an inherently wicked deed, 
to be sure. Such a purpose could not consort with 
vicious conduct. But the evil of human deport- 
ment may often be modified and even expunged by 
the real intent that pervades it, and it is this intent 
which, whether openly made known or forever held 
secret, operates upon the features. 

Smile, therefore, if you like ; smile always when 



. 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 117 



the frowns would come; but not at those things 
that appeal to merely animal being in a merely ani- 
mal way. Laugh, if you can; by all means, laugh; 
but not the cachinnations of the ape. Be jolly, if 
life grows buoyant ; but maintain enough gravity 
to keep your balance. "Fun is a good thing only 
when it spoils nothing better." The buffoon of 
heaven has a poor occupation. Talk, if you feel 
so inclined ; but not the gossip and slang that be- 
tray penury of language and inanition of mind. 
Make money, if you want wealth; but when you 
make a million, be sure that it does not cost the 
world a hundred millions. Dance, if you wish ; but 
not the can- can of the savage, nor the fan- fan of 
civilization. Paint pictures, if you will ; but not as 
the bootblack or the mud-dauber would paint them. 
Grow flowers, if you please ; but not the upas or 
the nightshade. 

Make music, if you prefer ; indeed, keep the soul 
in such accord with the sources of harmony that 
melody will flow from it constantly; but do not 
beat out the jargon of the "Pipes o' Pan." "Play 
the sweet keys if you would keep them in tune. " 
Have dominion, if you can ; but do not rob Nero or 
Dionysius of the tyrant's laurels. 

Have physical culture, if you would reach the 
state of genuine health and beauty ; but remember 
that no bodily training can bring culture that does 
not have its beginnings and its inspirations in the 
soul. You can not impose upon the body an exer- 
cise or gymnastic without harm. An attitude per- 
functorily assumed will undoubtedly have a reflex 
action on the soul, but the growing power is from 
within, and you can not reverse the order of nature. 
Mere muscular exercise is not conducive to either 
health or beauty. 



"Golden 

conduct does 

not come of 

leaden 

instincts." 

Herbert 
Spencer 



118 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Not only 
our souls but 
our bodies 
also are the 
secret places 
of the Most 
High." 

Horatio 
Dresser 



There is something beyond the physical in all the 
physical graces. There was plenty of exercise for 
the hordes that sent their annual tribute to the 
Caesars and paved the Appian Way and propelled 
the Eoman galleys. For centuries there was cease- 
less toil for all the Irish peasantry. There was 
unremitting labor for the serfs of Eussia. There 
was struggle, relentless and unending, for the 
French proletarian. There was drudgery galore 
for the Mexican peon. But with all their physical 
activities these peoples were not strong in body, 
graceful in movement, brilliant in intellect, coura- 
geous in spirit, nor beautiful in expression. To 
these facts we summon the testimony of such au- 
thorities as Macaulay and Gibbon, Froude and 
Grote, Prescott and Carlyle, Abbot and Tolstoy. 

Drudgery, however much the bodily activities re- 
quired, can never properly develop the human 
body. Where spirit is wanting, automatons are 
made. Where spirit is rebellious and soured, the 
automatons are badly made. Physical training is a 
misnomer and an impossibility where it does not 
include the mental relations that must attend all 
development. An exercise in which the mind takes 
no pleasure can not bring the highest physical cul- 
ture. All bodily movements ought to carry along 
the nerves a tingle of delight, and whenever they 
fail to do so, the ideal physical education is not 
going on. 

Nor can excellent results, certainly not the best 
results, be secured in any system of physical train- 
ing where the exercises depress the mind with a 
sense of drudgery, whether this training be received 
in a gymnasium or in a colliery. So long as the 
mind is in a recalcitrant, distempered state, it gen- 
erates harmful chemical changes and sends them 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 119 



coursing through the bodily fluids, resulting in 
physical inharmony. The gymnasiums of the coun- 
try have a great mission if their work is directed 
along lines of psycho-physical culture. A well-fed 
but inactive body is a storage -battery for devil- 
ment. It is a source of morbid excitation to all the 
intellectual and spiritual faculties. This excitation 
is always toward animal appetite, exaggerated pas- 
sion, and inferior sensation. 

Physical uprightness suggests moral uprightness. 
A manly attitude, tho assumed under command, 
recommends to the mind the conception of manli- 
ness. If the attitude can be made a pleasurable 
one, the mind takes up the suggestion, enlarges it, 
idealizes it, and projects it throughout the body 
from the thinking centers. The spirit of manli- 
ness must always accompany and inspire the manly 
attitude. The basis for both intellectual and 
moral culture may be physical, but in the long run 
intellectual and moral impulses must fashion the 
finest body. 

Food, water, air, sunshine, and exercise, will in- 
variably develop a pig into a hog ; but they will not 
always develop a child into a man or a woman. 
When we come to understand that moral obliquity 
is a vandal in the temple ; when we come to realize 
that perversity of mind and viciousness of spirit 
poison the fluids of the body, derange its functions, 
change the character, power, and direction of the 
life-forces and mar every phase of outward grace ; 
when we come to appreciate that purity of the inner 
life refines and beautifies the physical being, that 
cleanliness and manliness of spirit impart dignity 
to every muscle and every feature, we shall be 
willing to subordinate our bodies to the uses of the 
soul. 



< 'Beauty 
can not exist 
so long as 
the linea- 
ments of 
grace are 
disturbed 
from with- 
in." 

Winckelmann 



120 BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 



"The fault is 
not in stars 
but in our- 
selves that 
we are 
underlings." 
Shakespeare 



We must know that the body does not exist of 
itself or for itself, but that it may be refined, 
exalted, abased, degraded, according to the spiritual 
forces that dwell within it. We must know that in 
its proper uses it is a temple to live in, to think in, 
to love in, to worship in, and that through culture 
the very mortal things about us may rise up into 
the immortal. 

These are not mere dreamings. They go to the 
core of practical education. As already said, man 
does not differ radically from lower orders of ani- 
mals in the organs of vitality — heart, lungs, digestive 
functions. The immediate similarity is everywhere 
apparent. All bodily existence of whatsoever 
order, whether in man or beast, fish or fowl, de- 
pends upon digestion of food and assimilation of 
strength therefrom. The difference in power and 
the right of dominion inhere in man because of his 
spiritual elevation above all other genera. This 
spiritual elevation giving him superiority in fact, 
has also given him superiority in appearance ; and 
under any true psycho -physical training he may 
grow till 

" The tongue be framed to music, 

The hand be armed with skill, 

The face be the mold of beauty, 

And heart the throne of will. " 



Development is not all that a muscle needs, if 
by development we mean mere increase in mass. 
We can not accentuate the fact too much that the 
physical must be spiritualized before its finest tex- 
ture, form, and uses are available. The highest 
beauty of expression is found in perfect submission 
of a trained body to a trained mind. " Grace is 
economy of force. Awkwardness is physical ex- 
travagance. Muscular action is cheap ; nerve ac- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 121 



tion is expensive. " The spiritual is the one tireless 
force manifested in tireless energy. 

Mere physical growth is simple animality. "No 
herculean form was ever beautiful." Nothing is 
more graceless than an over-developed body. It 
may have crude strength, but it can boast of neither 
symmetry nor abiding power. It has ability of a 
purely physical kind that withers with the using. 
The famous Dr. Winship could lift two thousand 
seven hundred pounds, but his abnormal develop- 
ment gave him no grace, it could not conserve even 
the physical forces, and he died of prostration at 
an early age. The average life of the pugilist is 
short because the physical is consumed in the ab- 
sence of the seasoning qualities of spirit. Those 
who teach physical culture profoundly and well, 
and who apply wisely their own teachings to their 
own bodies, are the only representatives of their 
class who live long, look well, or move rhythmically ; 
and this teaching must hold constantly to the psychic 
relations involved in all bodily activities and con- 
ditions. 

The Amazonian women were huge in stature, mas- 
culine in disposition, "gallant viragoes carrying 
their victorious arms into Syria and Asia Minor," 
losing charm and grace in proportion to their mas- 
culinity. Penthesilia leading a band of female 
braves in the Trojan War against the armies of 
Achilles is an incongruous picture revolting to all 
refined taste, but a natural corollary of the haughty 
military spirit of these women. The "sumptuous 
figures of the Sabines " are illustrations of the same 
principle. 

True physical culture is the product and the ser- 
vant of the soul. Without one ray of spiritual en- 
lightenment or the uplift of a single moral purpose, 



"Poise of 
body is the 
external 
symbol of 
the highest 
moods of the 
soul." 

Moses 

True 

Brown 



122 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



" Why rely 
on human 
dreams and 
human phi- 
losophy 
when we 
can meet 
God in the 
Burning 
Bush?" 

Ralph 
Waldo 
Emerson 



the body may be stalled and fed and developed 
like an ox, as if muscle were the measure of man- 
hood. But whenever you grow the gnarled and 
knotted muscles of the serpent, you may look for 
the poison of asps beneath the tongue. For pur- 
poses of highest beauty the physical must be conse- 
crated to holy uses. The body of a divine-looking 
man must have, not the coarse grooming of mere 
animality, but of animal ity illumined by human in- 
telligence, nourished through healthful appetites 
and desires, hallowed by the fine touches of the 
spiritual faculties. 

Let it be repeated that bread and meat, air and 
water, exercise and sunshine can never properly 
develop the human body. They are essential ; the 
union of spirituality with materiality requires them, 
but dominion is given unto the divine nature, and 
this divine nature in communion with infinite per- 
fections on the one hand and fashioning its clay on 
the other is the only power that can assimilate the 
strength -giving, beauty-making, grace-preserving 
qualities from the food we eat, and the water we 
drink, and the air we breathe, and the sunshine 
that floods the world, and the shadows that com- 
pass the earth. 

All true art is spiritual, and all fine arts are 
psychic creations. "All great art is delicate art, 
and all coarse art is bad art," whether it be carv- 
ing angels oat of marble or fashioning them out of 
clay. The finer the thoughts and hopes and dreams 
you put into your life, the higher you lift the mor- 
tal materials toward the immortal standards. 

Grand living is the only perfect art that can 
promise the approximate perfections of face and 
form. Sculpture lacks color; painting lacks form ; 
architecture lacks expression ; language lacks por- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 123 



traiture; they all lack life; they are all reached 
second-hand from the soul. They are not the com- 
plete shapes and tints and harmonies of which they 
are born. With all art, the tools and instruments, 
and even the materials and the products are one 
remove from the body and two or more removes 
from the idealities from which they emanate. The 
soul never touches them. In your body your 
spiritual forces play directly upon fiber and tissue, 
nerve and muscle, the immortal fashioning the 
mortal at first hand. In the last analysis the di- 
vinest art is the soul's art of building the body. 
This is the only true physical culture. 



" The one 
thing in the 
world, of 
value, is the 
active soul." 
Ralph 
Waldo 
Emerson 



CHAPTER XVI 

Minds and Moods 
Graven Upon 
the Countenance 



CHAPTER XVI 

MIND AND MOODS GRAVEN UPON THE 
COUNTENANCE 

The very last thoughts you have before sleeping 
at night — the thoughts that charge your mind as 
you enter the subconscious state — are faithful build- —^ = 
ers of expression. They leave their orders to the << intellect is 
subjective self that weaves its impressions through the best gift 
all the texture of the body. to man ; 

The young pupil was weary trying to paint the beauty is the 
picture which his master had set for him to exe- 
cute. In his weariness he fell asleep at his easel, 

his heart burdened and filled with longings for the 
perfection of the picture. In his dreams he saw 
the marvelous blending of the colors and the pic- 
ture coming slowly and surely to his ideal. When 
he awoke, the canvas glowed with beauty. His 
master had slipped into the studio and given the 
boy his dreams. Even so, when you retire at night 
with holy thoughts possessing you, with longings 
in your mind and yearnings in your heart for the 
unfinished model of life to be made perfect, and 
with pleadings on your lips for the beautiful ideals 
unattained, the Master glides into your chamber 
and brings the wondrous colorings of your dreams 
into your face. 

So also your first morning thoughts determine 

largely your moods for the day, and your moods 

work mightily upon your features. Their effects 

are intensified and crystallized in the countenance 

127 



128 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



" Beauty is 
valuable or 
worthless 
according as 
you invest 
the property 
to best ad- 
vantage." 
Lady of Lyons 



if they are oft-recurring or permanent. When the 
birds begin to sing, start up the matin melodies of 
your soul. A beautiful picture for your eye; a 
beautiful song for your ear ; a beautiful impulse 
for your heart; a beautiful psalm for your lips; a 
beautiful ideal for your soul ; a beautiful mission 
for your life ; a beautiful purpose for the day ; a 
beautiful affection for the whole world : these min- 
istrations of the divine life lingering in your loves, 
glorifying the common, will peep through your 
countenance like angels smiling through a veil. 

Your thoughts accumulate in number and in- 
crease in power for building your expression as the 
years go by. Memory never lets loose when it once 
gets possession. It holds, as on a solemn bond, 
every thought that comes, and it keeps every ener- 
gy of the soul with invisible chisel and brush, plum- 
met and trowel, constructing the physiognomy ac- 
cording to the law of union that the mission of spirit 
is to create form. If, as the scientists tell us, no 
physical force can be destroyed (if, indeed, there 
be such a force), how much more faith should we 
have in the indestructibility of spiritual forces, and 
how much more should we recognize their divine 
office of fashioning, after their own correspondence, 
the bodies and faces of men. 

Immortality inheres in every inner force; and 
the power to create with ceaseless activity, and to 
project itself into everything which it animates, 
is its fundamental endowment in the flesh. From 
the lowest trend of instinct to the loftiest concep- 
tions of being ; from the solidest forms of thinking 
to the reveries and airy shapes that flit through 
consciousness; from the drudgery of abstract rea- 
soning and the travail of metaphysical research to 
the fantasies that fill your dreams and inspire your 



BUILDEBS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 129 

hopes ; from the commonest sense that leads you 
into shelter from the storm to those intuitions that 
bring angelic presences flocking about you; — all 
these permeate the body even as they find lodgment 
in the mind. From the darkest thought that be- == 
fogs your sky, on back to the strange new thrill at "That man 
the first recognition of your mother's smile ; from 1S ^\ ap P y 
the imps of malignity that sit like demons on the no gii mpse 
brow and dance like satyrs in the eye, to those sym- of perfec- 
pathies and charities that write " welcome ! " and tion." 
"God bless you!" over the portals of being ; from Santayana 

the malevolence and loathing that distil hemlock ===== 
and hellebore under the tongue, to the philanthropy 
that makes one universal heart of the race ; from 
the hopes that spin their threads in the loom of 
faith and swing them over God's throne, to the 
leaden lumps of doubt that drag you down toward 
the Inferno ; — they are all in the web and woof of 
the external as of the internal. From the curses 
that roll from the lips like besoms of destruction, to 
the prayers that rise unsaid on the incense of the 
altar where you kneel; from the unclean spirits 
that snarl and growl through human teeth and curl 
like scorpions on human lips, to the peace-giving, 
love-scattering, worshipful states that settle the 
beatitudes upon you ; from the sorrows and tears, 
the groanings and heartaches, that lead you through 
Gethsemane, to the joys that make the world within 
and without radiant and clear ; — all these, uttered 
or unexpressed, in so far as they have been present 
in your life or issued from your soul, have wrought 
upon the texture of your body and the character of 
your physiognomy. The result of these operations 
as applied to the face is the composite picture of 
your countenance that stands for every act of mind 
and every impulse of soul in all your earthly 
9 



130 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Man sees 
beauty be- 
cause the 
mind within 
is like the 
mind with- 
out." 
Rev. J. W. Lee 



career, and on beyond to where the first formative 
influences began in your ancestry. 

It is everywhere apparent that the thinking 
power in man is a great transformer of physical 
things. Thought} put into iron makes an engine ; 
into marble, a Galatea. Thought put into a granite 
quarry, and a cathedral rises ; into a garden, and 
roses bloom ; into the earth, and metals come forth ; 
into the soil, and harvests wave ; into the sky, and 
the heavens answer back to the questionings of men ; 
into the sea, and the deep gives up its secrets ; into 
stone and mud, water and wood, and a city is 
builded ; into the Alps, and the mountains are tun- 
neled ; into immensity, and the stars are weighed ; 
into the human body, and a divinity stands trans- 
figured. 

Millet gave a few francs for a piece of canvas. 
He then spread his thought upon it and it was 
worth a hundred thousand, to say nothing of the im- 
measurable satisfaction it has given the millions 
to look upon The Angelus. Handel registered his 
thought upon a rudely-drawn staff, and "The Mes- 
siah " has ever since delighted the world. Edison 
applied his thought to the electric current, and cit- 
ies were lighted. In all these applications and re- 
sults there is some great principle of philosophy or 
of being, and some outer development of the same. 

And yet we must remember that, while intellect 
imparts to the face the look of a reasoning creature, 
the spiritual faculties must finish and perfect the 
expression. If normally embodied, and normally 
related to the sources of its power, the soul unceas- 
ingly asserts the perfections of its character, while 
the body waits to reveal them in curve and arch, 
color and motion. "The heart once touched moves 
all the being." "The voice of the heart is the 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 131 



voice of God. " Here are the lasting values. In 
the eternal ideals there is eternal stability. 

We are an ease-seeking race. We want the clo- 
ver and the month of June always. We endure a 
great deal of rest. We pluck the rose, but shrink 
from the thorn. Hardships of all kinds are shunned 
with painful assiduity. We forget that sunshine 
alone will not bring the brightest hues to the 
flower. It needs also the night-time and the dews 
of evening. So, to man the shadows are refiniDg. 
They are the sleeping-places of the lower self ; the 
working opportunities of the higher. In them one's 
best strength is garnered. No man has ever risen 
to Pisgah's heights without going up through the 
valley. There is something glorious in the hope 
of reaching the summit, and in the faith that we 
can attain it; something glorious in the labor of 
pulling up over the rugged mountain-side ; some- 
thing glorious in the repose of confidence in self 
and selfhood, and in the promises of the greater 
glory that lies beyond. 

From the earliest settlement of this country the 
vestal fires have not gone out on the Alleghanies. 
So, too, on the Appalachian summits of life the 
beacon lights burn unceasingly for the dwellers in 
the lands below. It is the toil and effort of the 
ascent that make the heights enjoyable when they 
have been attained ; that make the face glow with 
the hardihood of struggle and the healthful bloom 
of victory. And yet ignoble toil and care have 
cloven hoofs. Unreasoning sorrow has tacks in 
her heels. Frantic grief has claws on her fingers. 

"AH sorrow is ignoble that convulses the fea- 
tures. " The philosophers tell us that it is physical. 
It is a poor doctrine that man need suffer through 
all the years. He was made to be happy, and all 



"The coun- 
tenance of 
the wise 
showeth 
wisdom ; . . . 
But a fool 
layeth open 
his folly." 

Solomon 



132 BUILD JEES OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"By agree- 
able emo- 
tions nervous 
currents are 
liberated 
which stim- 
ulate blood, 
and brain, 
and viscera." 
Tyndall 



his being is framed for joy. But sorrow, when it 
does exist, may become a maker of beauty if it is 
ennobled by faith, exalted by courage, and made 
tolerable by fortitude. The one unanswerable 
proof of this doctrine is found in the most beauti- 
ful face of the ages — that of the Man of Sorrows. 

The Toledo blade coiled into concentric circles 
has the elasticity to straighten itself perfectly. The 
gleam of the blade shut up in the coil leaps forth 
when it is liberated and reveals untarnished sur- 
face and faultless quality. The metal of character, 
bent with malevolence and twisted with prejudice, 
but refined in the unpatentable processes of nature, 
has the power of resilience back to its normal form 
whenever the deforming forces are withdrawn; 
and when its glory is thus unfolded, after the 
wrenching and distorting and corroding foes have 
been foiled, it has the seeming and the substance 
of divine majesty. 

The ministry of tears is often the ministry of 
angels. "Immanent in our hardships is the per- 
fecting power of God." If we had no winter, life 
would indeed be tropically luxuriant, but it would 
be very sappy, and it would be beggarly in the ex- 
pressional elements of strength and nobility. There 
is a certain noble seeming during the performance 
of a magnanimous deed, and the facial muscles corre- 
sponding, delighting in the concord of matter and 
spirit, are wont to linger in appropriate expression. 
A man is always greater within and without after 
passing through some ordeal that tests his character 
and tries his soul, provided soul and character 
keep their normal repose. He can do nothing 
great or heroic without leaving the impress of his 
triumph all over him. 

Abraham's face must have been grander after the 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 133 



trial of his faith upon the mountain. Job's face 
must have been spiritualized through the afflictions 
that magnified his soul's attributes. Jacob's face 
must have been diviner in every lineament after he 
had wrestled with the Angel of Peniel. Hagar's 
face mast have been radiant in the wilderness after 
the agony through which she cried for water. 
Moses' face must have glowed with majesty super- 
nal after twelve decades of service for Israel, for 
the God who had watched the lawgiver's counte- 
nance grow into His own likeness, took him to see 
the meaning of infinite perfections. The faces of 
Mary and Martha, spiritualized through simple 
faith, must have been more beautiful after their 
weeping over the dead Lazarus. The countenance 
of Mary Magdalene grew sublimer in the hour of 
waiting and watching at the tomb where she be- 
came the messenger of the resurrection. Surely 
the face of the broken-hearted Christ was more 
radiant after it had been washed by the tears of 
Gethseniane. 



"The fine 
emotions 
whence our 
lives we 
mold." 

Goethe 



CHAPTER XVII 

The Affectional 
Nature the The- 
saurus of Beauty 



CHAPTER XVII 



THE AFFECTIONAL NATURE THE THESAURUS OF 
BEAUTY 

Physical beauty does not exist of itself or alone. 
From the crystals in the pebble to the curves in the 
human body, everything that has form has a law 
or a soul behind it, shaping it and preserving its 
configuration. The crystals in the rocks are not 
more sure of their forms under the laws that create 
them than are the form and texture of man's body 
under the law of their creation. And just as the 
law that molds the sphere or shapes the crystal is 
intangible, evasive, so the ethereal qualities of mind 
and heart that do the finest work upon our bodies 
escape all coarser observation. 

Here again, forcing itself into recognition as the 
chief refiner of physical supports, is the affectional 
nature; not the affection of grosser attachments 
that owes its vitality to money or favor, position or 
power, but the love of the heart that rises above 
all sordidness, that reaches up beyond mere reason, 
beyond the formal processes of induction aud de- 
duction and enters the intuitional realms. What- 
ever a man loves, and the reasons for the loving, 
are things that can not be ignored in the contem- 
plation of life. 

Whoever lets his heart dote upon unworthy ob- 
jects has lowered the beauty of his face as of his 
ideals. Whoever loves to eat is already a gour- 
mand in fact and in appearance. Whoever loves 
137 



"A beautiful 
character 
can not be 
ugly in its 
external 
appearance." 

Dr. J. H. 

Kellogg 



138 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Beauty and 
grace are the 
power and 
the arms of 



woman. 



Tasso 



gold has already sold his affections for thirty pieces 
of silver, and his face, Judas-like, in kissing the 
coin, tells where his master is. Whoever loves a 
poodle better than he loves humanity has already 
animalized his features in some degree. Affections 
will not be turned out upon the commons to fellow- 
ship with the creatures there. They can not be 
lavished upou lower things without compromising 
the human that is above the merely animal and the 
divine that is above the merely human. 

Even in our love for our kind the reasons appear- 
ing will be the key to the elevating influence of the 
passion. Why do you love your friend ? For his 
riches'? For his position? His influence 1 ? His 
lands'? His power? His coach or his yacht in 
which you ride f His popularity ? His flattering 
words'? His service to your physical or other ordi- 
nary conveniences ? Why does he love you ? What 
inducements run out from your life and lay hold 
upon his affections? Would you love him less if 
to-day position, power, wealth should slip from his 
fingers? Would you cling to him in the crash of 
misfortune and the clash of misunderstanding? 
Would your heart be as warm for him if all the 
world should turn censor upon his character? 
Would he clasp your hand as cordially as before, 
and whisper his faith in you as sincerely, and speak 
his attachment for you as ardently if you should 
chance to fall where the paths are slippery? Does 
your fondness for your friend rest on favors or on 
any species of mere reciprocity that asks pounds in 
return for pennyweights? Whoever surrenders his 
affections to another because of these things has not 
loved well. Nor can the face of such a one have 
the most delicate sweetness that comes from lov- 
ing through affinities that can not perish tho the 



BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 139 



earth go asunder. A great affection lifts all it 
touches toward perfection. 

Eead Madame Villeneuve's fairy story where 
Beauty, in order to save her father's life, consented 
to associate with the Beast. The monster, en- 
chanted by her loveliness, keeping her company 
constantly, thinking her thoughts after her con- 
tinually, drawing upon her affections as his own 
noble qualities appeared, grew to be a handsome 
prince, thus perfecting the affinities and leading her 
to the altar. Beauty may endure deformity, but 
not to fellowship or consort with it until that 
deformity has been purged, not of its external 
shape, but of the inner abnormalities that created 
it. 

Eead the biography of Aaron Burr. The great 
statesman's character, warped by heredity, en- 
thralled by habit, obsessed by passion and belea- 
guered by ambition, despoiled his kingly face even 
as he despoiled the palace of Blennerhassett. If 
gold and lead are placed in intimate juxtaposition 
for a long while, each metal will diffuse itself into 
and throughout the other in appreciable quan- 
tities. Dragged downward by long association 
with the coarser elements of his life, the good and 
the bad blended inseparably, and all his being fol- 
lowed the greater specific gravity. 

Eead the life of Charles Darwin. In childhood 
and early youth he was confessedly fond of poetry 
and music. His eye had the lustrous softness of 
the gazelle's, and his features were illumined as 
with divine harmony. A few years in the wilds 
of South America radically changed his artistic 
tastes. The love of natural history, born into his 
blood, became the dominant impelling force of his 
life. His eye lost something of its gentleness, be- 



" The mole 
would live 
beneath the 
ground and 
Nature 
closed his 
eyes." 

Henry 

Drummond 



140 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"O fragile, 
dauntless 
human 
heart ! The 
universe 
holds noth- 
ing planned 
with such 
sublime, 
transcendent 
art." 

Helen Hunt 
Jackson 






came calculating, penetrating, judicial ; the lines in 
his face grew mathematical, stern, well-nigh aus- 
tere. Tho he grieved over his lost loves, they 
never came back to him. In this one part of his 
nature at least, the fires burned low and the sur- 
face chilled. While the embers within were dying, 
the warmth external was passing. 

Eead Silas Marner. Crushed by man's inhu- 
manity to man, bis sweet flow of spirit turned to 
vials of wrath which he poured out upon unpro- 
tected heads. Losing faith in God and man, he 
cursed the one and blasphemed the other. His 
countenance went down with his ideals and his 
faith. His features grew callous, his eye gangre- 
nous, his heart adamantine. He came to love only 
gold. He slept with it in his arms, the metal ab- 
sorbing his soul and his soul absorbing the metal. 
In the midst of his greed a thief entered and bore 
away his wealth. The only heart he now had was 
broken — broken like a stone. After a vain and 
frantic search through the storm for his treasure, 
he returned. Finding a yellow heap upon the 
hearth, he seized upon it with miserly avidity. 
But it was not his coin. It was the golden hair of 
a little child abandoned and left there in the warmth 
of the embers. He adopted the waif. Through 
the law of association that tends to make all things 
that dwell together resemble one another, the little 
one's beauty charmed his heart away from the curse 
of misanthropy, gave it back to him redeemed of 
its earthy odors, taught him faith in God and man, 
resurrected his buried character, and the noble look 
came slowly back to his face. 

Eead Goethe. Faust and Satan struggle for the 
scholar's soul. Angels watching toss bright roses 
down upon them. The roses falling upon Satan, 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 141 

turn instantly into coals of fire ; falling upon Faust, 

they heal his wounds. 

O holy affections, that, like the arrows of Aces- 

tes shot upward, turn into flame and light the way 

to heaven, fly skyward from the bowstrings of ===== 

the heart! O noble emotions, sublime aspirations, " Affection 

deep spiritual longings — ye angels on the battle- * s . 

ments of Destiny, drop your bright roses on the Das i s f 

wounds our evil spirits make, and leave us — beau- good in 

tiful! life." 

George Eliot 



CHAPTER XVIII 

A Great Heart — 
A Grand Face 



CHAPTEE XVIII 



A GREAT HEART — A GRAND FACE 



You are a slave if your body is master of your 
soul. You are a bond-slave if the anatomy and its 
passions have dominion over the spiritual and its 
affections. 

No man can have grace or freedom so long as the 
physical channels of being clog the flow of psychic 
forces. No human type can be beautiful where the 
avenues of impression and expression respond only 
to those influences that thrill the merely animal 
life. 

If God had intended man for nothing but the ani- 
mal plane, beauty would have been omitted from 
both soul and body except as it might appear inci- 
dentally rather than primarily. Utility would have 
been the one ultimate idea of creation. Human 
endowments would have been coordinate and iden- 
tical with those of lower orders of life, and the in- 
stinct of preservation and perpetuation of kind 
would have been the highest intelligence. But the 
immortal attributes of being not only vouchsafe 
to man the greatest reasoning powers, but they 
hold the possibilities of beauty transcendent and 
ineffable. 

The soul side of life cannot be neglected without 
harm to the body. The one marvelous constructive 
agency in the universe is mind. In its most com- 
prehensive sense it is the only one. The one terri- 
ble destructive agency in the universe is mind. In 
10 145 



"From facial 
configura- 
tion we in- 
tuitively 
take each 
other's meas- 
ure when we 
meet." 

Leibnitz 



146 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"The physi- 
cal is the 
substratum 
of the spiri- 
tual; the 
spiritual is 
the illumi- 
nator of the 
physical." 

Tyndall 



the broadest sense it is the only one. The evil 
spirit is the miter-headed basilisk whose gaze with- 
ers everything it looks upon, and whose breath 
asphyxiates like the blast of the simoom. The 
beautiful spirit is the huma that never lights, whose 
tireless wing is a prophecy that every head over 
which it flies shall wear a crown. 

Gladstone went every morning at nine into the 
chapel to pray. He kept the Sabbath for soul-cul- 
ture. To this conservation of his spiritual forces 
and this communion with the Infinite he largely 
attributed his health, his mental vigor, his magnet- 
ism, his success in life. It was soul -culture in him- 
self and his ancestry that gave him his magnificent 
physique, his stately bearing, his resistless person- 
ality — that shaped the skull and spiritualized the 
features of the Grand Old Man of England. It was 
this psychic power acquired in birth and enlarged 
in culture that assimilated from food and drink, air 
and sunshine, the elements of physical majesty. 
From the same food and drink, air and sunshine, an 
ignoble mind would have assimilated the elements 
of physical degeneracy and facial deformity. All 
energy is good. All misapplication of energy is 
bad. 

The objective mind of man is a necessity of physi- 
cal environment. Its cognitions come through the 
physical senses. All its processes are joined in 
some way with the material universe, or some part 
of it. The Subjective mind is a necessity of the 
spiritual world, of spiritual environment. It is at 
once the assurance of immortality and likeness to 
the Deity. It has charge of all the so-called invol- 
untary functions of the body. The action of the 
heart, the lungs, the circulation, nervous system, 
glands, depurating organs, goes on under the direc- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 147 



tion of this mind, or department of mind. The 
union of the body with these two phases of mental 
activity in perfect harmony, and all in harmony 
with the infinite sources of power, cannot fail to 
make man a God-like type in all his inner and his 
outer life. 

There can be no surer guarantee of beauty than 
perfect loveliness of spirit in perfect union with the 
bodily agents of expression. There is not a fiber 
or tissue of the human composition that does not 
acquire its size, shape, and quality from the mental 
forces that send nutrition to it and impel its every 
action. The sensitiveness and mobility of the 
features give them superlative expressional power. 

George Eliot's Tito murdered his conscience ; his 
face was overshadowed by a ghoulish expression. 
Jean Paul's Charles put out the inner light till re- 
morse could not reach him, so dark was the way to 
his secret life. His face was as rugged as a piece 
of granite in human likeness. Macbeth with a 
mental dagger murdered sleep and happiness ; his 
features bore the scars of the spirit's stiletto. 
Goethe was so handsome that when he walked 
down the street people would turn from their work 
to gaze after him. It was not so much the lordly 
face as the lordly spirit beaming through it that 
charmed the gazer everywhere. 

It may be truthfully said that whoever has a 
great heart has a grand face. St. John, called 
the beloved disciple because of the depth of his 
affectional nature, is an apt illustration here. 
There is an old legend that when he came to die 
he asked to be carried out among the children ; and 
when they had gathered reverently about him, he 
said simply: "Little children, love one another." 
And when they questioned him concerning that 



"Thought is 
as distinctly 
a force as is 
electricity or 
magnetism." 
Honord 
de Balzac 



148 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

strange thing lie called death, he answered only: 
"Little children, love one another." And when in 
wonder they questioned more of their reunion be- 
yond the grave, he reiterated the charge: "Little 
ssg children, I say unto you again and again, Love one 
" The truth another." More important than life, more momen- 
tous than death, of more concern than the resur- 
is lov© 

Baj! rection, of more worth than the sure knowledge of 

_ __. the coming companionship of souls gone before him 
or following after, was the love of one another in 
this world. Blessed Apostle of love, no wonder 
your face has come down to us soft and gentle as a 
mother's smile. 



CHAPTER XIX 

The Affinities of 
Form and Spirit 
Inalienable 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE AFFINITIES OF FORM AND SPIRIT 
INALIENABLE 



A god-like spirit would not have been breathed 
into a satyr-like form. Without any philosophy 
on the subject the Greeks and the Eomans created 
their deities after the strictest physical correspond- 
ence with their qualities of character. Instance 
Zeus and Jupiter, Poseidon and Neptune, Hephaes- 
tus and Yulcan, Athene and Minerva, and all the 
category of deities of these nations. Here is proof 
intuitional embracing two peoples and several cen- 
turies that the mind of man associates perforce cer- 
tain physical forms with certain intellectual and 
psychic conditions. 

The horizontal face of the serpent is devoid of 
expression except as it indicates the power to crawl 
and smite and poison. The eye of the boa-con- 
strictor is not beautiful, but it shines and gleams 
and glistens with suggestions of malignity. The 
spirit it exhibits accords with the physical expres- 
sion. Nor can we get our consent to separate the 
spirit of any animal from its appropriate bodily 
outline, nor substitute another spirit therefor. The 
gazelle is a graceful and attractive little creature in 
configuration and movement, but it would be a 
monstrosity if we could imagine its body animated 
by a human soul. The bird shooting the sunbeams 
from its wings, and sweeping through the air in arc 
and hyperbola, seems a very sprite of gracefulness, 
151 



" Mind ex- 
pands in the 
body in the 
measure in 
wnich it con- 
tains and re- 
flects the 
eternity of 
truth." 

Dr. Paul 
Carus 



152 BUILDEB8 OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 



" It is the 
Christ with- 
in that sub- 
dues the ani- 
mal and 
evolves the 
angel." 

J. T. Jacob 



but for it to be moved by the divine attributes 
of man is unthinkable. The form and movement 
must correspond with the animating principle, and 
this truth is not only universal, but it is so lofty a 
biological fact that it comes to us through the in- 
tuitional faculties. 

But, even as beasts, the lower animals are uglier 
externally in their lowest passional states than in 
their milder moods ; and the analogy goes to the 
top in the scale of being. Men have unpleasant 
countenances with all manner of disagreeable states. 
Bloodthirsty beasts have forbidding faces. The 
grandest physiognomy loses some element of its 
majesty whenever its possessor yields himself to 
any evil passion. 

Carrying the application lower, the lion loses his 
kingly look when you array his teeth to view, and 
unsheathe the claws in his great foot, and feel the 
earth tremble from his cavernous roar. The polka- 
dots and diamond shapes in color on the snake are 
dispossessed of beauty when associated with the face 
and the fangs. What a gulf between him and the 
lion ! Again, between lion and man ! They are all 
products of an inner principle of intelligence and 
spirit. As they differ in the interior life, so do 
they differ in outer manifestation. 

Even after we reach the human plane the varia- 
tions and contrasts of bodily configuration and ex- 
pression are measured by the degrees of animality 
or spirituality that prevail in the inner being. 
What a chasm between the face of the cave-dweller 
and that of the polished Caucasian ! Between the 
countenances of the Helvetian women standing in 
their impedimenta wagons urging their warriors to 
fight against Csesar, and those of the Grecian maid- 
ens whose beauty evoked the love of the gods ! 






BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 153 



What a hiatus between the look of the restored 
Neanderthal man and the face of Isaac Newton! 
And yet, here again, as everywhere, the outer form 
is but the physical correspondence of the inner life. 
Different stages of civilization may easily be graded 
by their respective physiognomies. Progression in 
mental and spiritual culture can do almost anything 
with form and feature. Eetrogression can darken 
the Temple Beautiful, blight its worshipful atmos- 
phere, desecrate its altars, and despoil its sanctu- 
aries till nothing will be left but a wailing-place 
along its walls. 

In the valley of the Euphrates it is said that for 
lack of cultivation the wheat has degenerated into 
the wild rice whence it came. After the farmers 
of the Shenandoah Valley had returned from four 
years of war, they found that the strawberries in 
their gardens had gone back to the common type 
of the prairies; and the roses, once deep-red and 
many-petaled, had reverted to the single leaf and 
pale pink variety of the forest. 

The wheat stands for the heart of man — the flour 
of life mixed with the cheat and losing its sub- 
stance. The berries are the products of man's in- 
tellectual meadows, choked with weeds, stifled with 
grass, poisoned with nettles — retrogression fallen 
upon all. The roses are the countenances of men, 
petal after petal of spiritual unfoldment drop- 
ping away and withering with neglect, their mel- 
low tints fading and vanishing into extinction 
among the brambles. Whether by the Eiver Eu- 
phrates in the Old World, or in the Valley of the 
Shenandoah in the New, neglect of culture at the 
heart briugs facial emptiness, physical degeneracy, 
and spiritual inanition. 

By those who have given the matter attention, it 



"The foun- 
tain of reju- 
venescence 
is fed by 
human sym- 
pathies." 

Emily 
Bishop 



154 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"From the 
Zulu belle 
with a ring 
in her nose to 
the Puritan 
maiden with 
a rose in 
her hair, 
enhancement 
of person is 
practised." 
Ellen Van Poole 



is claimed that people living in the city have 
brighter faces than those dwelling in the country 
places. If so, the reason is near at hand ; it is be- 
cause, not of natural environment, but of human 
association and the consequent mental activity in 
the multitude. The town girl sees more, hears 
more, feels more, at least a wider variety of seeing, 
feeling, and hearing, and her face responds accord- 
ingly. But the country is the natural place for up- 
lift of feature so far as environment is concerned. 

Contrast the black walls of the town with the 
clouds and the sky that wall in the country. Con- 
trast the swaying of the throng with the waving of 
the grain-fields. Contrast the noisy rattle of wheels 
with the musical click of the sickle; the dusty 
streets with green country lanes ; the electric lights 
with the stars ; the cooped-up restraint of the city 
with the wild freedom of rural life. Contrast the 
odors of sewer and back alley, the befouled air of 
sweat-shop and manufacturing establishment, of 
street- car and hotel, court-room and opera house, 
saloon and dive, beef -market and livery- stable, with 
the fresh ozone-bearing atmosphere of the country. 
No one can doubt that rural life has the physical 
advantage over the city for health, vigor, and con- 
sequent beauty; and if the dwellers there would 
increase the custom of study and reflection upon 
the many objects in nature ; if they would cease to 
envy their urban cousins, and learn to love their 
own world, and to draw from Nature her beautiful 
lessons, and mingle more in the social life of their 
neighbors, and talk with the stars and flowers and 
brooks, the effect upon the face would be a revela- 
tion of Beauty's own. 

It is the social phase of being in the town, the 
inevitable and varied and constant interchange of 






BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 155 



thought, the multiplied diversity of stimuli to 
meutal activity, that makes the difference in expres- 
sions of culture in urban and rustic countenances. 
But there are compensations for the country as 
there are disadvantages for the town. Cities are 
centers of sin. The country holds the moral bal- 
last of the world. If the city face is more brilliant, 
perhaps the country face is more artless. If the 
city face is more flexible, more vivacious, .perhaps 
the country face is more tender, more sincere. 
After all, the hardest faces are found, not in the 
country, but in the congested districts of the city 
where the evil in the life of each is diffused through- 
out the lives of all. 

But, whether in the city or in the country, it is 
the individuality of every creature that must main- 
tain its integrity and defend itself against the 
encroachments of evil. There is truth in the old 
legend that the walls of Paradise were removed 
from around man in order that he might have the 
protection of the stronger walls of his own person- 
ality. Scientists tell us that the glowworm keeps 
its enemies away by the brilliancy of its own light. 
An illumined conscience over a strong will is the 
light that drives from the human face its lines and 
angles of uncomeliness and the foes that bring them 
there. 

In Faust it was the innocence of Marguerite that 
defied the demons that coveted her. Her beauty 
charmed admiring devils — charmed the good that 
was in the fallen angels — charmed the surviving 
attributes of celestial life. And yet to them she 
was so thoroughly unapproachable that their legions 
could not contaminate her though they sat in the 
confessional beside her. When she went down it 
was rather by the wiles of men whose demoniacal 



"The only 
emotion 
which does 
not tend 
to its own 
destruction 
is that 
which is 
self-poised." 
Genevieve 
Stebbins 






" The builder 
never dies ; 
there is no 
waste in this 
world of 
love." 

Charles 

Brodie 

Patterson 



156 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

spirits joined with their intelligence and debased 
affections were more powerful than the siege of 
Mephistopheles and his legionaries. 

Innocence is the armor of invulnerability seldom 
penetrated. The sinless soul is the bird that lines 
its nest from its own bosom, giving the burnish of 
the dove to its plumage and the power of the eagle 
to its wings. The Ghebers say that when little 
Abraham was thrown into the fire by Mmrod's 
order the flames turned instantly into beds of 
roses, and the child fell asleep as in its mother's 
arms. Innocence was its own philactery. Haw- 
thorne's Donatello resembled the Marble Faun of 
Praxitiles. Becoming enamored of the gildedly 
beautiful Miriam, and incidentally her copartner 
in crime, he dropped to the criminal plane of living 
and forfeited his likeness to the statue. Theresa 
Macri, Byron's Maid of Athens, more charming 
than the poesy of her lord, lost her beauty through 
the despoiling effects of gloom and despair. Man- 
fred sold himself to the Prince of Darkness. Com- 
munion with shapes of sin left him devoid of human 
sympathy, destroyed his fraternal sense, and 
wrought for him a countenance as cold and bleak 
as the Alpine peaks he dwelt upon. 

Everywhere, in high life or in low, in real his- 
tory or in the fictions of men, in the myths of young 
nations or in the legends of the old, in^ the religions 
of the worshipful or in the skepticisnfe of the God- 
less, the outer physical manifestation, consciously 
or unconsciously, is accepted as the product of the 
inner life. 






CHAPTER XX 

Moral Qualities 
the Refiners of 
Expression 



CHAPTER XX 



MORAL QUALITIES THE REFINERS OF EXPRESSION 



Soul-culture ought to be the chief business of 
this world ; it is sure to be of the next one. 

We learn much intellectually, to be sure; but 
" knowledge is a mere incident of the deeper wis- 
dom." Sown a natural body, raised a spiritual 
body, we may expect that that spiritual body will 
conform to the culture of the soul at the time of 
death and in the resurrection. As a filthy soul 
can not inhabit a pure body in this world, so God 
has never promised that it shall have a glorified 
body in the world to come. "Be ye perfect " was 
not the injunction of a jester. It was the language 
of one whose philosophy applied to his own life 
gave perfection of spirit combined with perfection 
of body. If it meant not absolute, it certainly did 
mean relative excellence; and its application to 
humanity makes men sons of God in inner life and 
outer manifestation. 

To Christ sin was the antecedent of sickness; 
ugliness the corollary of disobedience; deformity 
the penalty of broken law. Debauchery of mind 
is not only the inconoclast of character, but of its 
physical supports also. Everything is debauchery 
that throws the soul out of harmony with its physi- 
cal organism or out of adjustment with divine per- 
fections. 

"Beauty is the natural food of a healthy imagina- 
tion." This is true in lowly life as well as high. 
159 



"Soul and 
body are 
never in 
such inti- 
mate and 
harmonious 
union as in 
religious 
life." 

Dr. A. A. 

Lipscomb 



160 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



" We look 
not at the 
things 
which are 
seen, but at 
the things 
which are 
not seen." 

Paul 



And you need not wait till your dreams of luxury 
and ease come true before you begin to build a 
temple beautiful of your body. "No occupation is 
so burdensome that it cannot be made an opportu- 
nity for the growth of character. " All right growth 
of character beautifies the body. No condition of 
life is so poor as to be unfavorable to beautiful 
thinking if we keep the faculties in balance. The 
outcome rests with the individual. 

"No man can attain self -dominion for another." 
He has no business doing so if he could. 

Selfhood and self-mastery are for every man — for 
himself, not for friend or foe. For every sojourner 
here there is a Jacob's ladder upon which angels 
will descend or demons will ascend according as it 
is lifted into the sky or projected into the nether 
world. Truth is universal in its existence, but in- 
dividual in its application. Here we approach the 
final source of all verities. God is incomprehen- 
sible without truth as truth is incomprehensible 
without God. Whoever touches truth, though it 
be but the hem of its garment, receives virtue as 
did the woman who touched the Master's robe, for 
there is beauty in truth just as there is truth in 
beauty. And "the truth shall make you free"; 
but "there are two freedoms: the false, where man 
is free to do what he likes ; the true, where he is 
free to do what he ought. " In finding this latter 
freedom for himself every man finds the glory of 
his own individuality and recognizes it as one of 
the blessings and providences in the great evolu- 
tion of being. It is the accentuation of the per- 
sonality. 

The mind that feeds on criminal thoughts, or de- 
vises ways and means to execute diabolical plot- 
tings, or holds pleasure in vicious schemings, is 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 161 



giving a corresponding quality not only to his ex- 
ternal expression but to his blood, his bones, and 
his muscles. Dr. William G. Anderson, Associate 
Director of Gymnastics at Yale, holds to the doc- 
trine that degenerate mental states create corre- 
spondingly degenerate conditions of fiber and tissue 
throughout the body. 

Pure thinking is the normal activity of the mind 
and the one prerequisite for pure quality of blood 
and muscle. There is a chemical difference be- 
tween the elements composing the sweat of the 
criminal and those of the perspiration of an inno- 
cent man. "A genuine tear is warm; the hypo- 
critical tear is cool." A contemporary scientist 
has demonstrated by actual experiment that differ- 
ent mental operations produce immediate chemical 
changes in all the fluids of the body, and similar 
changes in the direction of the vital currents. 

Ghastly mental pictures, images of disease, sensu- 
ality, vice, produce scrofula of the soul, the fac- 
simile of which is leprosy of body. Courage swells 
the arteries; cowardice empties them; heroism 
quickens the vaso-motor nerves; sycophancy re- 
laxes them; anger vitiates the saliva and other 
secretions; hatred heats and poisons the blood; 
gloom clogs the glandular system ; fear blanches the 
face; malice lays its cold hand on the heart and 
circulation ; fright paralyzes the physical agents of 
the life-forces; extreme and violent passion de- 
stroys mental vigor and exhausts brain energy, de- 
thrones reason and superinduces death. All peace- 
ful, hopeful states produce health and beauty. All 
sordid, malignant inner conditions affect the circu- 
lation, destroy digestion, impair the assimilating 
powers, invite disease, and create uncomeliness. 

Mind and muscle are so closely associated that 
11 



"Temper 
has much to 
do With fash- 
ioning the 
features all 
through 
life." 

Humphreys 



162 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"The wicked 
man wink- 
eth with, his 
eyes, speak- 
eth with his 
feet, teach- 
eth with his 
fingers." 

Solomon 



neither can appear or change without a parallel 
appearance or change in the other. Integrity of 
mind, consciously or unconsciously, means integrity 
of muscle. Integrity of body is a strong support 
to integrity of mind. Integrity of both is the sure 
guarantee of grace and beauty. Charles Dudley 
Warner is authority for the statement that vicious- 
minded persons have muscular states peculiar to 
their class. And this holds true not only with ref- 
erence to facial and bodily appearance, but also to 
the very structure and quality of the entire anato- 
my, so that the term " criminal muscle" is as cor- 
rect as the term " criminal person." The rude in 
spirit are invariably uncouth and awkward in 
movement and repulsive in expression. If apparent 
exceptions are found, it is only where there are 
enough beautiful ancestral tendencies remaining 
and operative to force their beauty-making quali- 
ties into form and face despite the deforming pro- 
clivities abounding. 

Culture of soul must bring grace of body and 
illumination of feature beyond all possible loveli- 
ness that could be developed in the untutored life. 
There are no real exceptions. Everything that is 
comes of law, exists under law — eA r en liberty itself. 
"An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit." An 
evil spirit cannot fashion a beautiful face. 

A man of apparently polished mind may be as 
graceless as a boor, and his features may be almost 
as forbidding as a Hottentot's. But examine care- 
fully into his culture. It is one-sided, unsymmetri- 
cal, irregular, anarchical, atrophied here, hypertro- 
phied there, and altogether chaotic. These things 
you will find in his immediate personal education, 
or, rather, lack of education. Examine into his 
genealogy. You will discover a long line of ances- 



BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 163 



try whose crude customs and oblique methods of 
thinking have entailed upon him an overwhelming 
tendency toward mental idiosyncrasies and conse- 
quent physical irregularities, projecting the very 
external forms of their hideous spiritual images 
upon the third and fourth generation. 

Some of the best men and women in all the world 
ugly? Possibly so. But they might have been 
beautiful if the incorrigible tendencies of heredity 
had been controlled and the misguided labor of 
education had been directed properly. Further- 
more, a beautiful soul will forge its way through 
muscular walls into the countenance, and we must 
look for the subtile signs of its appearing. 

Some of the most gigantic minds have builded 
unsymmetrical faces'? Certainly so. Genius is 
never balanced within, and it can never be balanced 
without. It is Nature on parade, robbing some 
phase of life to make superlative and exaggerate 
some other phase. An irregular and angular face 
is the sure result of unsymmetrical development of 
the mental faculties and of the affectional life. In- 
deed, it is necessary that one be unbalanced to be a 
genius; and so genius is always idiosyncratic, ex- 
clusive, warped, biased, over-developed somewhere, 
atrophied somewhere else. 

The balanced mind, the soul attuned to spiritual 
perfections, has always the beautiful face. Exces- 
sive or exclusive endowments or training in any 
department of mind specializes the features accord- 
ingly, and their accentuation is deformity. Hered- 
ity, here also allowed to operate, aids in giving^ 
its peculiar topography to the buccal areas. The 
consummation devoutly to be wished by those who 
would be beautiful is the acquirement of perfect 
mental poise and moral equipoise. Intellectual 



" There is an 
Absolute 
ideal in 
•which all 
other ideals 
lose them- 
selves." 

Santayana 



" You must 
by all means 
acquire the 
nice poise of 
bearing and 
demeanor 
that is a sign 
of a well- 
balanced 
mind." 

Dr. Nathan 
Oppenheim 



164 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

acumen, joined with the instinct for form, gives 
the marble its outline ; but the moral qualities are 
the refiners of expression in man's handiwork as in 
his body. They are the most delicate workmen in 
the art of making the countenance. 

Those who treat lightly these principles or spurn 
these possibilities are persons who do not think, or 
who possess no appreciation for the beautiful, or 
who look for sudden and miraculous revolutions 
that are absolutely impossible. The processes of 
reform are prompt and faithful in their beginnings, 
though often slow of final and complete redemp- 
tion. "That which is finest in product is long- 
est in gestation." " Nature will not preserve that 
which it takes no time to acquire. " The first essen- 
tial is to right about toward Eden. The journey 
back will depend upon your distance from the goal 
and your mileage per diem. 

You can not in a single day scale the heights from 
which you have been falling for ages. You can not 
in a moment leap from the common into the per- 
fect ideal. All life is a growth, and all growth is 
gradual if it is permanent. You need not expect 
at a single volitional impulse to sweep away the 
barriers of inner awkwardness and outer deformity 
that are the cumulative penalties of broken law. 
You can not take the aged oak that has grown 
twisted and gnarled for a hundred years, and by 
any system of cultivation metamorphose it into 
arboreal perfection. But you can dig about it and 
prune it ; you can fertilize and water the soil at its 
base till new sap will rise in the great trunk and 
run out through the branches, so that the acorn it 
bears will have the hardihood of evolution back to 
the original type. 

So of the gnarled and knotted human specimen. 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 165 

He may not be made perfect in his day, but he can 
be made at least to remember the smile of child- 
hood and the buoyancy of youth, to start up reveries 
and hopes and dreams in the promise of which he 
shall stand more erect and bear a more manly look - — 

— things that shall evoke the sleeping senses of the "The heart 
beautiful, the true, and the good, and send them re- hath its own 
juvenated into the world, and into the generations f^ m ?£ y 
that are to come. mind." 

Longfellow 



wr- 



CHAPTER XXI 
Soul Companion- 
ship for the Body 



CHAPTEE XXI 



SOUL-COMPANIONSHIP FOR THE BODY 



Harmonia's necklace hangs at the throat of 
beauty wherever the inner life constantly and per- 
sistently breaks troth with its own perfections. No 
pretender can ever occupy the throne of beauty. 
In counterfeiting, your face is the die — always 
exposed. You can not long deceive your own soul 
with things that are conscious forgeries. It is worse 
than folly to undertake permanently to assume an 
exterior out of correspondence with your habitual 
mental states. Making pretty faces in the midst of 
vicious living is but weaving Penelope's web. 

Let it be reiterated that features grown granite 
in sin can not be softened fully within an hour, but 
let it be repeated also that the work of softening 
may begin within a moment, and, with persistent 
inner rectitude, they learn the harmony of obedi- 
ence. Here is a face brazened into corrugations of 
crime; here another transfigured into malforma- 
tions of bestiality; here a third sodden with the 
vices of a lifetime; here a fourth steeped in the 
poisonous excrement of a million vicious thoughts ; 
here another scarred with the blasphemies of half 
a century; here another tattooed with the barba- 
rous etchings of scorn ; here another bearing signs 
of misanthropy; here another lecherous with the 
libertine's look of lust; here another befouled with 
the perverted mental states of threescore years and 
ten : You can not take such faces as these, despoiled 
169 



" With un- 
erring intui- 
tion does the 
heart choose 
between its 
friends by 
their faces.' 3 
Montaigne 



170 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Each, sub- 
lime desire is 
a telepathic 
communica- 
tion from 
God, advis- 
ing* one what 
may be his." 

Floyd B. 

Wilson 



of their finest seeming, set with the sins of age, and 
restore them to symmetry within a day. 

But these hard-faced mortals can begin the work 
of reformation within and feel the satisfaction of 
conscious growth toward loveliness. Yet this un- 
dertaking would be silly in the presence of a wicked 
life. Perverseness trying to fashion loveliness is 
Don Quixote fighting the fateful windmills. It is 
braggadocio posing for courage when courage only 
can avail. Truth is the one unchanging story of 
the face. Nature hardens every muscle used, and 
hardens it in proportion to its use. Why ? She is 
not only a creator ; she is a preserver of what she 
creates. Stability in her external forms comes of 
permanency of her inner moods. "Every thought 
has a definite effect upon the body — pictures itself 
there." "Every right action, every true thought, 
sets its seal of beauty on person and face." 

"It is impossible for a man that is clean in 
mind to be unclean in body, " and still impossible 
for such a man to have a repulsive appearance. 
"Dwelling mentally upon the bright, beautiful 
things that come into this life, strengthens the body " 
and beautifies it. You can not set limitations to the 
development of the human powers. The body can 
not stand still and be unaffected while the mind is 
growing and expanding. 

The deeper you stir the mental depths the finer 
the expressional qualities that flow into the counte- 
nance. You need not worry about the result. The 
features cannot remain irresponsive while the facul- 
ties are in spiritualized activity. The soul relates 
us at once to God ; the body to the material world. 
But the material world is His also. "Man is not 
pure spirit, but he has a body also, which is, for the 
soul, sometimes an obstacle, sometimes a means, 



BUILDEBS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 171 



always an inseparable companion." Let us see to 
it that it gets soul -companionship. 

"Mental discord and unrest are manifested in 
physical sickness and disease " and deformity. 
The body is dependent upon food and drink, to be 
sure, but "it is more dependent upon mental har- 
mony for its health. " Every law of the invisible 
life tends directly and persistently and unerringly 
toward perfect harmony. The whole trend of being 
is a crusade to recover the Holy Land. The un- 
varying tenor of existence, untrammeled and unim- 
peded, is toward ideal graces — toward perfection of 
mind, soul, and body. The ugliness that is inci- 
dental may be banished by the beauty that is 
inherent. 

Every thinking act is a boomerang. No thought 
emanating in your brain or harbored in your con- 
sciousness has ever gone forth to return unto you 
void. Give out ugly thoughts of any human being 
or of your higher self, and they come back to yon 
to despoil. Give out beautiful thoughts to all the 
world, and they come back to you to exalt your life 
and body. Ugly thoughts are forces sent out over 
the waters when the sea is angry and the tides are 
high and the winds are wild. They will return to 
you driving and beating against the shores of your 
life till your face will assume the look of horror 
which they will inspire. Beautiful thoughts are 
voices of authority floating out over the deep, com- 
manding the waves to calm, and they will return to 
you in musical ripples singing at y o ur feet : " Peace, 
be still!" 

"Back of every great action there should be a 
great repose;" but, "you can not have repose of 
muscle without repose of mind. " Turn loose the 
evil and it will fall from you of its own weight. 



" The prob- 
lem of the 
soul is the 
basis of 
ethics ; the 
health of 
the soul is 
the purpose 
of life." 

Dr. Paul 
Carus 



172 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"The beauty 
of the sky is 
from the 
depths of 
space ; from 
the depths of 
spirit the 
beauty of 
face." 

Dr. F. B. 

Carroll 



Wickedness does not cling to man ; man clings to 
it, and all error has an enormous specific gravity. 
All sin has a leaden body. It flies with the waxen 
wings of Icarus, and wo to the life that rises by 
their power. All truth has an ethereal body. It 
has the gift of levitation in its wings. Cling to it, 
and feel the buoyancy of its upward flight. Coun- 
terfeit emotions are injurious. "Beal emotions, 
whether painful or delightful, leave one eventually 
with a new supply of strength. The sham, with- 
out exception, leaves us weakened physically and 
mentally," and in the visible effects the face suffers 
most. 

A teacher once had a pupil of royal blood but of 
bad behavior. Not wishing him to be punished 
corporally, he pinned upon the boy's lapel a purple 
ribbon to remind the youth of his rank. More 
surely are the royal colors upon you. You are the 
sons and daughters of the King. But you are under 
law. With all matter and all mind you must fall 
into line in obedience. The right to claim kinship" 
with divine perfections implies the ability to ap- 
proximate them in so far as they apply to the phys- 
ical being. 

" Our highest conceptions of what we ought to be 
are but prophecies of what we may become. The 
ideal men and women of to-day should be the real 
men and women of to-morrow." The artist was 
right when he said that every muscle ought so to 
move that if it should strike a note at any time 
it would produce only harmony. But the source 
of this harmony is in the silent, invisible moving 
power within. ~No reform will ever come to this 
world, either in individuals or in nations, if it deals 
with externals only. Culture of the outer life must 
come from the culture of inner qualities. 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 173 



According to Mantegazza, expression is always 
as rich and varied and complex as its physical sup- 
ports will allow, and they owe their peculiarities of 
form and movement to the simple or complex activi- 
ties of the thinking and feeling powers within. If 
the horse could think more he would soon acquire 
a different facial topography. In all animal life 
the greater the degree of intelligence the greater 
the wealth of facial anatomy, and hence the greater 
the expressional power. Here is proof that soul- 
qualities actualize themselves in the face. This law 
holds good through all orders of animal life, and 
even in the vegetable kingdom. Wherever culture 
or cultivation is given, an improvement in texture 
and form is the invariable result. 

We train our animals to look their best and our 
agricultural products to make the finest display. 
The horse is bred and groomed till he is perfection 
of his kind. His breeding is not so much of his 
body as of his qualities and the characteristics in 
his pedigree. His training is directed to his intel- 
ligence, (whatever name you may give that), far 
more than to his mere physical life. A spiritless 
horse with a perfect form is an unknown incon- 
gruity. A shoddy equine form animated by super- 
lative qualities of horse-character is not found in 
all the tribe. Every trainer knows that equine 
moods determine the animal's appearance, that they 
are the causative influences of peculiarities of form 
and movement; that they are responsible for the 
docile or the vicious eye, the rough or the glossy 
coat. These qualities are developed till the horse 
is adapted to the race -track, the saddle, the draft- 
wagon, or the treadmill, according to the demand. 
We breed and feed our hogs till they lack nothing 
but feet. Their training can be so managed as 



"Let your 
soul speak a 
purer lan- 
guage as 
you arrange 
your toilet." 

Albert B. 

Oiston 



174 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



' 'The slum- 
babies grow 
like the 
dump -piles 
they look 
upon; the 
angels grow 
white look- 
ing on the 
throne." 
Edwin 
Markham 



to guarantee the conventional " streak of lean and 
streak of fat. " Our cattle are so grown under the 
laws of culture peculiar to them as to secure ideal 
results for the dairy, for the lumberman's trucks, or 
for the packing -house. Our dogs have attention 
until heredity and education fit them for the chase, 
for the terrible work of the bloodhound, or for fill- 
ing the places of children in the affections of men 
and women. 

We apply the laws of evolution to fruits and 
flowers, vegetables and farm products. They all 
rapidly approach perfection of their species ; and in 
all of them the invisible life-principle is the deter- 
mining agent to fix their form and color, texture 
and quality. For an exhibition of the marvelous 
development of almost every species in the two 
kingdoms, go to your county fair, your state fair, 
the World's Fair. 

But men are worth more than Percherons or po- 
tatoes. Women are worth more than Jerseys or 
chrysanthemums. Children are worth more than 
puppies or pumpkins. Our first culture is toward 
ourselves. From the life-principle of plants and 
the instinct of beasts, both of which illustrate so 
marvelously the power of evolution, it is profitable 
to turn to the soul of man, woman, or child. Here 
is a field for culture where God's masterpiece may 
go forth like Ivanhoe, conquering every adversary. 

In man's facial anatomy are countless possibili- 
ties of movement, and the higher the order of intel- 
ligence and the loftier the soul-functions, the more 
spiritual and the more beautiful the expression. 
The anatomical wealth of the human face was cre- 
ated for and is sustained by the wealth of the spirit 
of man. As the soul of man transcends in kind 
and power the life-principle of the horse, so does 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 175 

man's face surpass that of the horse in expressional 
dignity. The bulldog has a different look from the 
shepherd dog for the same reason that the human 
tough has a different look from that of the cultured 
gentleman. Their faces are physical correspond- 
ences of different internal creative energies. 

"Hehada 
face like a 
benedic- 
tion." 

Don Quixote 



CHAPTER XXII 

" Humanity . . . 
Cries Protest to 
the Judges of the 
World " 



CHAPTEE XXII 



HUMANITY . . . CRIES PROTEST TO THE JUDGES 
OF THE WORLD " 



In Ireland, culture has made princely gentlemen 
in form, feature, and demeanor. In the same coun- 
try, industrial slavery has dwarfed the minds and 
deformed the bodies of her peasantry. 

In every case the creative causes are to be found 
in the mental states that force their way into the 
physical being. The Hibernian gentleman of cul- 
ture is large in frame, courageous in spirit, courtly 
in deportment, full of vital force, sunny, hopeful, 
chivalrous, handsome, a fine type for any race. 
The Irish peasant from the same stock and living 
side by side with the other for centuries, is stunted 
in body, irregular in feature, angular in movement, 
pugnacious in spirit, lacking in vitality, his life 
animalized and his face fallen — a poor type for any 
nationality. The gulf between them is wide, but 
the inner causes present the same antipodal rela- 
tions. 

The same is true of the money-kings and of the 
millions toiling in the sweat-shops. Both are de- 
spoiled: the one with the inhumanity imposed, 
the other with the inhumanity received. The same 
difference is observable in the Castilian aristocrat 
and the Mexican peon. The same is true among 
all peoples where the many are not brothers to the 
few who are brothers to them. Their stations in 
life are as widely different as their facial expres- 
179 



"A stiff face 
is a danger- 
ous one ; the 
more flexible 
the more 
beautiful it 



is.' 



Edmund 
Shaftesbury 



180 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"The hum- 
blest arti- 
san, though 
unsuccessful 
in a worldly- 
way, may- 
give his 
child a herit- 
age of 
strength in 
body and 
mind." 

Dr. Nathan 
Oppenheim 



sion, and both of these are dependent largely upon 
circumstance and environment, but more largely 
upon their modes of thinking, feeling, and wor- 
shiping. 

The same was true of the cultured classes of 
Eome and the hordes that went under the yoke of 
their legions. The same was true of the princes 
of Great Britain and the myriads of India who 
were robbed and plundered under the maladminis- 
tration of Warren Hastings. The same is true the 
world over, whether of races or of individuals. 
Princely thinking makes princely faces ; niggardly 
thinking makes weazened countenances. Kingly 
office and queenly title do not guarantee a single 
look of nobility. Monstrosities of human form 
and seeming have often worn the crowns of nations. 
It is the kingly, queenly character that is the artist 
of fine expression. Inheritance, therefore, is not 
all. It is the cultivated inheritance that counts. 
An unworked gold mine is worth little more than 
a bank of sand. An undeveloped spiritual inherit- 
ance is worth little more than the heritage of an ox. 

It was not the mere war and battle that changed 
the look of Priam's progeny. It was the broken 
spirit of Carthage under the Eoman oligarchy that 
dispelled the luster from the eyes of Dido's race 
and put the look of vengeance in its stead ; so that 
the face of the Carthaginian, retired to a foreign 
shore, away from war and strife, once gentle and 
fraternal, but, under the oppression of the Caesars, 
transfigured by rancour and revenge, was the same 
upon which the Eomans gazed with horror when 
her conquerors and their allies entered the city to 
scatter her treasures along the Tiber. It was the 
cruelty of the Latin victors that, crushing the power 
of the Gaul, left upon him an un vanquished hatred 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 181 



that made sharp angles and misanthropic lines in 
his face. 

It was not mere labor that despoiled the features 
of the Irish peasantry or of the peons of Mexico. 
It was not the drudgery in Erin nor the toil in 
India, not the serfdom in Russia nor the tribute ex- 
torted from the Eoman dependencies, but the lack 
of fraternity, the dearth of human sympathy, the 
humiliation of spirit, the crushing of racial and in- 
dividual pride, the degradation of enforced slavery, 
the forgetting of common charities, and the conse- 
quent hate and passion engendered by all these, that 
swallowed up the spirit of the nations, crushed the 
divine qualities of character, and evoked the diabol- 
ism of the human heart — these are the things that 
lowered the forehead and sloped back the frontal 
zone of the teeming hosts ; these are the things that 
brutalized the jaw and dimmed the eye and blurred 
the countenance of the millions; these are the 
things that almost drove God out of man to make 
room for the devils that beleaguered him. The 
scorpion has an oil to soothe the sting he inflicts ; 
inhumanity has none. 

La Place is correct: "Beyond the limits of the 
visible anatomy there is another anatomy whose 
phenomena we cannot perceive with the mortal 
eye ; beyond the limits of the external physiology 
of animal forces is another physiology that must 
answer for the outer one. " 

A writer and student of ethnology has observed 
that among savage nations all the women are as 
much alike as sisters. They resemble one another 
in every peculiarity of configuration and expres- 
sion. The reason is that their spiritual activities 
are constantly the same from year to year, and 
since their inner states are perpetually identical, 



"I shall not 
die ; I shall 
not utterly 
die ; for 
beauty born 
of beauty 
. . . that re- 
mains." 

Madison 
Cawein 



182 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Mystic 
smiles and 
beckonings 
lead us 
through, the 
shadowy 
aisles out 
into the af- 
terwhiles." 
James 
Whitcomb 
Riley 



the universal laws of life act alike upon them all. 
They drudge through the same routine throughout 
the whole of life. Their minds are educated in 
precisely the same way, the inner light shining 
upon them all with the same quality and intensity. 
They think, feel, act, hope, dream, worship as with 
one mind and heart, the external result of necessity 
recording oneness of product. 

" Things that resemble each other in quality and 
function resemble also in shape, and wherever there 
is unlikeness in quality and function, there is un- 
likeness in facial configuration. " The Swiss people 
have an ecstatic eye from daily admiration of their 
mountain scenery. The lustrous, up -turned eyes 
of the Italian women are due to ages of spiritual 
contemplation of the Madonna. The Egyptian's 
face of old was plain, solid, angular, like his pyra- 
mids. Any Arab's face is wonderfully like that of 
any other Arab, and, following the racial tradi- 
tions of his descent, his countenance shows that his 
hand is turned against every man. The Grecian's 
face is symmetrical and beautiful like the things 
he projected with his mind and fashioned with his 
hands. The Eoman's face is cold, stern, philo- 
sophical, conquering, like his internal habits, his 
schemes of conquest, and his indomitable will. The 
Bushman's face is broad, flat, animal, carniverous, 
like his appetites and passions. The face of the 
North Australian is scrawny, degenerate, charac- 
terless, like his barren soul. The Indian's face is 
wild and unkempt, like his wilderness, his very 
bones standing out in the service of muscle rather 
than of any sort of culture. Untutored mountain 
races have granite faces, as if the rocks had given 
them their flintness. Under culture their craggi- 
ness of feature grows rounded and symmetrical. 



BUILDEBS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 183 



Yet in all these types there is a national or tribal 
vanity. No race has ever degenerated so far as to 
lose every vestige of the ideal. In nations as in 
individuals the attributes of perfection never die. 
And as peoples rise or sink in mental and spiritual 
conditions may we measure the degree of nobility 
or crudeness in their features. 

Someone has said that " all heights are cold," 
but the Savoyards tell us that the highest pastur- 
age is the sweetest and best. Above the timber- 
line flourish the loveliest flowers. There are no 
tints like those found at the feet of the snows. 
They seem to draw from heaven rather than from 
the earth their airy loveliness. If you lose any- 
thing by the ascent or by the elevation, Nature 
compensates for the loss. The mountain top may 
be chill and desolate, but from its summit you get 
a broader view of the earth, and this broader sweep 
over the material globe brings mental expansion. 
On the peak you can feel for once that you are 
above the clouds ; you can observe something more 
as to how the sunshine floods the world and how 
the rains descend upon it ; you can realize the ex- 
hilaration that comes from living and breathing in 
the cool, bracing, healthful atmosphere above the 
miasma and above the storm. 

So, too, there are heights of character from which, 
if one sees the grosser things of life, he must look 
downward. Here you get a broader view as to how 
the sunlight of love and charity pours over all be- 
neath you. Here you get the jaundice out of your 
eye and the malaria out of your soul. Here you 
drink of the vitex wine that weans the heart from 
earthly affections. But as the mountain is difficult 
to ascend, so it is not always easy to rise to the 
peaks of character. He who would stand upon 



"The good 
and the true 
are eternal, 
and may be 
permanently 
realized." 
Leander 
Edmund 
Whipple 



184 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"What 
house more 
stately hath 
there been or 
can be than 
is man P " 
Rev. J. Vf. Lee 



them can not do so only in his dreams. He must 
strive and struggle and climb. No lofty ideal will 
stoop to conquer. It will not come down to him 
who from some low retreat lazily glances upward 
and beckons it to descend. 

The divinest things are exhaustless and free, but 
they are as coy as maidens who would not be won 
with unholy wooing. They shy away at the ap- 
proach of an unrighteous affection. "The weed 
grows without cultivation; the flower must have 
attention. " Eoth are found in the same soil. They 
flourish side by side — close together — so close some- 
times that the line between them is scarcely per- 
ceptible. In Wyoming hot springs boil up in the 
midst of the snows — the thermal antitheses holding 
their existence in companionable proximity, and 
indeed blending without any visible dividing-place. 
The melting-point and the freezing-point seem to 
be the same, but a delicate thermometer will show 
the precise graduations in temperature. 

These are fit illustrations of the good and the bad 
in life. In nothing is character in the abstract 
more clearly made concrete than in the ability to 
make distinctions where differences do not appear. 
He who has not the power to distinguish minutely 
and to segregate the mass intelligently can never 
have any other than a disordered mind and a com- 
posite face where the good is gravely overshadowed 
by the bad. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

The Grandeur of 
Life Lost in the 
Littleness of 
Living 



CHAPTEE XXIII 



THE GRANDEUR OF LIFE LOST IN THE 
LITTLENESS OF LIVING 

The measure of every life may be determined by 
the streams and tides of spiritual power that flow 
into it and issue from it. But the mere girding of 
one's strength is not all. The faculty of absorbing 
like a sponge is an unfortunate possession if there 
exists also none of the emitting and disbursing 
qualities. The life which, like the Dead Sea, 
drinks in all that comes, will be brackish and bar- 
ren. Whoever withdraws himself into his own con- 
ceits and lives in his own selfishness will wither as 
a nut fallen before its time — shriveled in the ex- 
terior and worm-eaten within. 

In a crowded city a lady descended from her 
mansion into the street. A ragged waif dragged 
himself along toward her, leaving the blood-stains 
from his bare feet in the snow. 

"Buy a paper, lady*? "he asked, his extremity 
being his only appeal, the only pathos of the scene. 
She stood waiting, smiling her greetings upon him. 

" Yes," she said ; "I will buy them all." 

The child was stunned. He had never sold out 
his whole stock to any single purchaser before. 
Visions came as to what he would do with his 
profits, for this wholesale business would give him 
a chance to run back to the office and sell another 
batch, thus making two days' earnings in one day. 
Holding out his little blue fingers, he grasped the 
187 



"Pleasure is 
not a sign of 
well-being ; 
in an un- 
healthy soul 
it is a token 
of disorder 
and degen- 
eration." 
Dewey's 
Psychology 



188 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



" Happiness 
is at all 
times a sign 
of well- 
being ; it is 
the internal 
side of well- 
being." 
Dewey's 
Psychology 



coins that fell into them, his eyes filling with grati- 
tude. 

"Are you not very cold ? " she asked as she drew 
the gamin up under her sealskin cloak. 

"I was till you came along! n he answered, tho 
his voice was muffled with emotion. 

The soul of the street arab had spoken better 
than he knew. The spirit of the child was drawn 
by angel ministrations into his words and his face. 
And such deeds will invariably bring to the actor 
a sweeter countenance. The affectional nature 
dowers the soul with marvelous powers over the 
body. When love enters a darkened heart it is as 
if the lights had been turned on. Eeach out and 
brush away the clouds from some poor life, and the 
sunshine will break through the rift upon you also. 
Wipe away the tears from your neighbor's face to- 
day, and your own eyes will be brighter to-morrow. 
Carry the grace of charity into some lowly life in 
some lowly place to-day, and to-morrow your hu- 
manity will be radiating from the soul- centers over 
all the world about you. 

Only the common things of life are self- centered. 
Men of great intellect, but of gross moral qualities, 
weave nets and snares to encompass everything 
that approaches, and, with the spider's cunning, 
sink into the body with the spoils. Like Mokana, 
the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, they would wear 
veils over their faces under pretence of shading the 
dazzling light of their countenances from public 
view. Living falsehood within, they must project 
external hypocrisy upon the world. 

"A perfect form is the universal vanity. " It 
ought to be. The individual who has lost all pride 
in personal appearance stands alone as the dodo of 
the ages — the only one of his kind in history. 



BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 189 



More tears have been shed over bad complexions 
than over bad debts. More heart -aches have come 
from ugly features than from bruised consciences. 
Persistent as life has been the passion of the race 
for loveliness. Un trammeled by wicked principles, 
unhampered by vicious proclivities, this passion, 
which is really affectional in its nature, would give 
the race the desire of its heart. Ever-present, ever- 
active, ever-assertive, it is as characteristic of the 
lowest tribe of the jungle as of the lords and ladies 
of the courts of Europe. It is intensified and ex- 
alted in proportion to the stage of civilization, yet 
there are savages among us here at home as well 
as in the South Sea Islands. 

Poverty of soul has always impoverished the hu- 
man physique and stunted its expression. The 
drawn faces of the serf and the slave, the pinched 
features of the hordes enthralled by man and 
doomed by circumstance, the starved and stiffened 
countenances of the poor in spirit — these signs of 
outward squalor show the status of the mendicancy 
within. And yet, every sentient creature knows, 
or ought to know, that "men may rise on stepping- 
stones of their dead selves to higher things " ; that 
"men may rise from brutal deformity to ideal 
beauty, from even satanic hideousness and malig- 
nity to divine exaltation " ; from animality to di- 
vinity. 

We clear our skies in one part and cloud them in 
another. We keep our atmosphere full of cyclonic 
vapors, whirls, and vortices, while all Nature de- 
clares that so long as we consort with these things 
our faces shall be stormy and portentous. 

The Japanese study the art of dwarfing plants 
until sometimes a tree a hundred years old is 
scarcely larger than your arm. Except in size and 



" Every soul 
is a book of 
judgment, 
and Nature, 
as a record- 
ing angel, 
marks there 
every sin." 

Henry 

Drummond 



rr 



"It is 
enough for 
us to see one 
ray of light 
to judge the 
glory of the 
sun." 

Father Ryan 



190 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

majesty it seems to have all the qualities of other 
trees; but closer examination shows that the ar- 
boreal spirit has been checked and thwarted in 
its normal work. It reveals the fact that while 
earth and air and sky have been full of nourish- 
ment, and while Nature has offered her bounty and 
held up the forest giant as a model, her spirit has 
been choked and restrained, and her building and 
beautifying forces have been subdued by the poor 
arts of man. 

The dwarfing of men is a more common, as it is 
also a more horrible, desecration of Nature's laws. 
This process of shrinking and shriveling goes on 
till sometimes an old veteran has not the stature of 
a child in the absolute essentials of character. 
Babes gray with years! We separate and disjoin 
our finer attributes when they should all keep com- 
pany along the journey. We lose the grandeur of 
life in the littleness of living. Some of our facul- 
ties are rushed to death, overworked, consumed 
with the fires of youth and the enthusiasm of man- 
hood, while others are left to atrophy in the flesh. 
Common endowments are carried to the dome or 
perched upon the spire for exhibition, while the 
divine powers are left to mold and mildew in the 
cellar. 

The well-balanced nature is best for happiness 
and grace. The balance will never come to you so 
long as you war against the only laws that can 
give poise of physical and spiritual being. It will 
surely come to you in some degree unless these 
laws are in some way and to some extent contra- 
vened. We grow feverish in our haste with the 
commonest things of life, while the affinities for 
spiritual companionship drop out of the procession 
to weep along the highways and hedges. Old Mor- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 191 



tality, the itinerant antiquary in Scott's novel, 
spent his time and energy scraping the moss from 
the tombs of the Covenanters. Life needs this 
queer artisan — not for the slabs of marble above 
the dead, but for the granite shafts of character 
above the living. 

"No matter how discouraging or repulsive a 
man's exterior, there resides in him a potential 
god. " What we need is to give this divinity power 
plenipotentiary over his physical empire. What 
we need is to give this spiritual envoy extraordi- 
nary full possession and dominion in the name of 
God. "It is ours to restore the body and the spirit 
to the purity, and the intellect to the grasp they had 
in Paradise, " and to all of them an approximation 
of the ideal beauty of Eden. "Ideas of beauty are 
among the noblest that can be presented to the hu- 
man mind, invariably exalting according to their 
degree, and God intended we should be continually 
under their influence. " 

We are coming to understand the laws of life 
commensurately with our environment and the 
essential elements of being. The victory of the 
divine self is in all our evolution. Optimism is 
the tidal wave sweeping over the sea of humanity. 
Man is outgrowing the animal — that is, he is grow- 
ing away from it. The impingement of good 
thoughts upon the world is making it better, and 
whatever makes it better makes it more beautiful. 



* * Your won- 
der is all 
without rea- 
son ; I am 
carrying all 
my treasure 
with me." 

Bias 



~ 



CHAPTER XXIV 

Spiritual 
Estheticism 
the Soul's 
Crowning Glory 






1 



CHAPTEE XXIV 



SPIRITUAL ESTHETICISM THE SOUL'S CROWNING 
GLORY 

The contemplation of beauty of any kind gener- 
ates a species of attraction for loveliness in the life 
of the contemplator. To the healthy spirit the 
world abounds in graces. "No object in nature 
but presents to the rightly thinking mind incalcula- 
bly more beautiful than deformed parts." The 
stone beneath our feet is full of crystals waiting to 
shower back into our eyes the smiles they extract 
from the sunbeams. The rugged rocks have de- 
lights in them. Are they plain and severe in con- 
figuration 1 ? Their sealed lips hold the graces of 
the laws of rhythm caught up and crystallized in 
the molding of a perfect sphere. 

The luminous surface of the sun far exceeds the 
black spots on his disc. Even the dark areas may 
feed his beams. The universe is full of glory. 
There are but few shadows. Opacity reflects light, 
absorbing all it can. All nature, animate and 
inanimate, has a predominance of well-favored 
qualities. The person who reads these words has 
more beautiful elements of character than ugly ones. 
They may exist in the shadows waiting for the 
illumination of the ideal. They may be only slum- 
bering potentialities. But they are there, and the 
eternal laws of awakening are in them. They hold 
the secrets of unlimited development. Man is 
inherently good ; he is incidentally bad. He is in- 
195 



"What we 
love we live 
and repre- 
sent in face 
and body." 
Swedenborg 



196 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



44 In beauty 
that of de- 
cent and gTa- 
cious motion 
is more than 
that of 
favor." 

Francis 
Bacon 



herently beautiful; he is incidentally ugly. En- 
dowed with intelligence, will, spiritual faculties, 
and the latent power of growth, he stands in the 
presence of infinite possibilities. He makes his own 
limitations. 

To the earnest soul looking down the years be- 
yond with faith in what he is and yet may be, life 
is an ever- widening perspective ot grandeur. "Ele- 
vation of mind is produced by contemplation of 
greatness of any kind, " our own greatness modestly 
and reverently considered exalting every faculty of 
the soul and every function of the body. "The 
right ideal is to be reached by the immediate ban- 
ishment of the signs of sin from the body." 

The faces of the dullard and the philosopher are 
proofs in the concrete of the constructive power of 
intelligence here contrasted in the features that 
body forth the inner degrees of mind-power so 
faithfully. The wide gulf between the countenances 
of the saint and the murderer is evidence of the 
authority of the moral forces over expression. As 
the faces of these seem utterly uncompanionable, 
even so is there incompatibility of spirit. Love 
husbands its own. It needs no interpreter to read 
its language. There is an affinity in the counte- 
nances of the vicious wherever they meet. Their 
very smiles have the congeniality of crime for crime 
where the smile of honesty would be a rebuke 
though given in friendliness. 

Everywhere like consorts with like. Old Fagan 
and his retinue drifted together as so many atoms 
of matter, the larger force in the stronger person- 
ality drawing the others about him as a center. 
Anarchists somehow feel and recognize one another 
by some strange attraction which is unknown be- 
tween them and the law-abiding element. Thieves 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 197 



gravitate toward thieves. Grades of society are 
self -regulating. Barnaby Budge, the half-witted 
boy, conversing in mimic tones with the raven, was 
a living demonstration of the search for compan- 
ionship. 

Not only do persons of similar character drift to- 
gether, but they look alike. Every trade has its 
physical insignia. Every profession has its physi- 
ognomy. Assemble a body of lawyers. No dis 
cerning mind would mistake them for doctors. 
Enter a group of financiers. You could not make 
the blunder of calling them dreamers. Convene a 
congress of statesmen. No observer of men would 
pronounce them musicians. The patriotic stamp 
is minted in their faces. Snapshot a company of 
actors. No judgment is so inapt as to class them 
as inventors. Take a crowd of prize-fighters — 
or, better, let them pass with the assurance that 
their expressional counterparts are to be found no- 
where else in the biological field. Enough to say 
that the pugilistic mind makes the pugilistic body. 

Nothing is more manifest than the actualization 
of the character in the body, the silent self going 
even beyond the physical tenement and entering all 
the handiwork of men. Eeferring again to the 
matchless race of the ages, the whole of Greek life 
was in the physique and the arts of that people. 
But the Greeks could not conceive of a spirit in 
dynamic and kinetic energy fashioning as with a 
dictator's hands all they were and all they did. 
" They could do nothing without limbs. Their gods 
were finite gods, talking, pursuing, journeying. 7 ' 
They had ideals without being conscious of them 
truly. But they missed the spiritual estheticism 
without which neither life nor art can reach its 
finest possibilities. It is sophistry to claim that, 



"A man's 
whole soul 
and charac- 
ter are seen 
in his face." 
Marcus 
Aure/ius 



198 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"The long 
way behind 
is prophecy 
of those per- 
fections 
which are 
yet to be." 
John 
White 
Chadwick 



because they surpassed all other peoples in their 
arts and in their bodies they left nothing to be de- 
sired. £To art that omits the spiritual qualities, 
the pure moral sensibilities, cau satisfy the soul, 
whether it be in marble, on canvas, in harmony of 
sweet sounds, or in the silent building of the body. 

In the banquet, Diotima said to the old philoso- 
pher : " Oh, my dear Socrates, that which can give 
value to this life is the spectacle of eternal beauty. 
What would be the destiny of a mortal if he could 
contemplate the beautiful without alloy, if he could 
see face to face the divine beauty ? " In spirit this 
is precisely what every one may do. Your ideals 
ought not to fall below the perfections. Because 
you do not attain them is no excuse for trampling 
them underfoot. 

The normal body is an echo-gallery of God's 
thoughts. It ought not to become a cave for bats 
and owls and serpents. In the construction of a 
great edifice, in the chiseling of a fine statue, in the 
painting of a lovely picture, in the composition of 
an oratorio, in the building of a masterly oration — 
in all these, art is hampered by technique and con- 
ventionality — things without which no art could 
exist. But in the building of the body there are 
no such obstacles or restrictions. Under the inex- 
orable law of their union, spirit asserts itself over 
matter, and matter obeys in form, color, and motion. 

If it is true that "every work of art, whether 
great or small, figured, sung, or uttered, if truly 
beautiful and sublime, throws the soul into a gentle 
reverie that elevates it toward the infinite, " surely 
far stronger than this is the refining influence that 
comes of contemplating the perfect work of art 
where the soul, en rapport with the sources of its 
power and in mastery over its physical supports, 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 199 



has translated its highest moods through visible ex- 
pression. No matter where you find beauty, or in 
what that beauty consists, it is an expression of an 
eternal truth. Genuine grace has always some- 
where the charm of infinite loveliness upon it. 
Nothing of real beauty is material unless it stops 
with the material. If physical substance were 
beauty, it would satisfy the esthetic sense if piled 
up into the most incongruous shapes and aggregated 
into the most forbidding relations. The dummy 
has a certain order of graces to commend it to favor. 
It has form, color, proportion, likeness; and as a 
dummy it is beautiful. But it lacks animation; 
it has not the beautifying principle without which 
it can not pass as anything but a lifeless automaton. 

And yet how like this same effigy is the manikin, 
stunted a hundred years before he was born, and 
scantily endowed when he came into the world, go- 
ing up and down the earth orphaned in spirit and 
in form. The saddest picture in the art gallery of 
mankind is the face utterly wanting in spiritual 
illumination, the starved and shriveled soul em- 
bossing only indigence in the features. There is 
no penury like that of the spirit insolvent at the 
bank of God. 

The human heart has an inherent vanity for love- 
liness, not only in the face fed by its own blood, 
but in the countenance of whomsoever may share its 
affections or in whatsoever may receive its admira- 
tion. But in neither case does mere physical fair- 
ness satisfy. "The emotions produced by true 
beauty turn the soul from this world. " The senses 
carry us but a short way. With leaden gravita- 
tions they drop back to the earth. " There is in 
the soul an infinite power of feeling and loving to 
which the entire world does not answer. " 



" Better fifty 
years of 
Europe than 
a cycle of 
Cathay." 

Tennyson 



200 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"The beauti- 
ful is an ab- 
solute prin- 
ciple—the 
essence of 
beings." 

Frangois 
De/sarte 



The depths of life can not be reached with a pole. 
Spiritual illumiDation is the only thing that can 
satisfy the soul of a normal being, either in his own 
face or in that of any other that holds his confi- 
dence or wins his love. There is no vandalism 
so terrible as that which wantonly destroys love- 
liness of person or of spirit. "Beauty in the 
absolute, like truth, belongs to none of us. We 
can not dispose of it arbitrarily." Soul- values 
are our eternal possessions, but both souls and 
values are God's; here is the final repose of all 
idealities. 

The ability to see this Archetypal Model in 
everything, and the capacity to apprehend and en- 
joy something of His transcendent loveliness vouch- 
safe divine graces to the countenance. "The mind 
is too sensible of its own birthright not to delight 
above all things in escaping the limitations of the 
senses." 

The highest beauty of the material world always 
appeals to something beyond itself. All beauty of 
the spiritual world rests only in the absolute inde- 
fectibility of the beauty of God. Taste, smell, and 
touch are allied more to the body ; sight and hear- 
ing more to the service of the soul ; but all these 
avenues are physical, and they cannot be depended 
upon to convey impressions of absolute truth. Ideas 
suggested by them are always subject to error and 
distortion, while the sublimest realizations of beauty 
enter consciousness through the spiritual faculties. 
All the senses are relative, variable, treacherous, 
and all beauty received through them must follow 
the law of their fickleness and vary with their aber- 
rations. Absolute beauty is perceived with the 
spirit's eye, and with the same unerring compre- 
hension is it diffused through the body, the absolute 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 201 



thus securing a relative expression of itself in the 
physical. 

The beauty of Eubens, when he decorates a female 
figure with gaudy colors, is coarse and vulgar. The 
beauty of Eaphael is everywhere chaste, ideal, un- 
affected by display or by sensuous elements. The 
distinction shows that while both are artists, great 
and deserving, the one sometimes descends to a 
very ordinary level, while the other lives perpetu- 
ally in the ethereal atmosphere of art. The face 
of Eubens bears the stigmata of occasional coarse- 
ness ; that of Eaphael the insignia of pure art. Spirit 
has made the artists as the artists have made their 
handiwork. 



"If love 

move you, 

then the 

Spirit is 

upon you, 

and the 

earth is 

yours." 
Ruskin to 
Art Students 



CHAPTER XXV 

The Finest Bloom 
of Youth 
the Elixir of 
Immortality 



CHAPTEE XXY 

THE FINEST BLOOM OF YOUTH THE ELIXIR OF 
IMMORTALITY 



" Beauty is not skin-deep "—the kind you buy 
at the apothecary's. Belladonna may make the 
eyes lustrous temporarily, but a lofty spirit is a 
better dilater of the pupils. Lacquer and enamel 
may make a piece of wood passingly pretty, but on 
the human face cosmetics constitute an apology — a 
begging of the question. 

You can not with a painter's brush give back to 
the faded daisy its purple and its blue. It must 
grow and absorb from within. Bun along your 
flower-beds and ask the modest little faces there 
how they came to be what they are, and to you who 
listen well they will answer : 

" When the sky was made in the first great days, 

And they fitted the corners so true, 
There were bits and tags and snips and rags 

In the cutting that just fell through. 
They were fresh from heaven and dainty bright, 

And, oh, but the bits were blue ; 
So they just took root in the earth that night, 

And 'twas thus that the violets grew." 

Human skill is great in the art of imitating Na- 
ture, especially when faces are to be manufactured 
of pomade and powder, rouge and carmine. And 
yet when finished, when artistically built up, they 
are but paste jewels, where ruby a ad emerald, dia- 
mond and sapphire, are the real gems. They are 
205 



" The love of 
beauty is a 
part of all 
healthy hu- 
man nature." 
John 
Ruskin 



206 BUILBEBS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



* i No man or 
woman pos- 
sessing the 
high attain- 
ment of fa- 
cial flexi- 
bility can 
be called 
either plain 
or ugly." 

Edmund 

Shaftesbury 



only masks with the soul smothered underneath. 
They are but common wood stained into forgery of 
the real grain of the real timber. 

One of our senators was approached by a lady 
admirer who asked : 

"Where in the world did you get your complex- 
ion ? " To which he replied : 

"Where in the city did you get yours?" 

And this reminds us that the greatest beautifier 
is not pink pills nor arsenic tablets, jelly pastes 
nor cucumber extracts, freckle lotions nor wrinkle 
eradicators. The best tonic is a pure heart. The 
best shoulder- brace in all the world is self-respect. 
The best cosmetic on earth is a noble life -purpose. 
The finest bloom of youth extant is the elixir of 
immortality with which every soul is dowered. 

Eegarded only in its capacity to eat and drink, 
sleep and wanton, the body becomes a hovel of 
filth and uncleanness. Eegarded as a temple where 
all defilements are banished and all holiness abides, 
it becomes a shrine, with God and His angels sitting 
and communing in the sacred presence. The body 
as a mass of matter has little significance. It is a 
mere incident of being. It cannot assume the maj- 
esty of master without loss to its own utilities and 
abasement of the inner life. 

No human being can be beautiful while he robs 
his heart to feed his muscle, or saps his soul to 
strengthen his sinews. Not mind, nor soul, nor 
body can become ugly so long as spirit is in abso- 
lute dominion and life is in harmony with the in- 
exorable laws of being. All outer graces come 
from allowing the soul to rise into realms of good- 
ness and truth, and by practising those exercises 
which, directly and reflexively, invite the most 
beneficent influences. 



BUILDERS OF THE . BEAUTIFUL 207 



"No man would live in a shoddy house if he 
could get a better one." This is precisely what 
every intelligent creature may have — a better one. 
The prerogative to claim a beautiful body is the 
heritage of every beautiful soul. But human life 
is full of buried talents. The coin the Master gave 
is so often wrapped in a napkin and laid away, 
while the soul is bankrupt for need of interest on 
its values. Whoever uses the investment which 
God made in his creation must realize a rare income 
on his estate. 

Whatever you are drawn to you find yourself in. 
It is the echo of some desire ; the outer correspond- 
ence of your inner sense ; the picture of some part 
of your soul ; and if we search for its counterpart 
it may be found. Whenever you applaud, you ap- 
prove somethiug in your own character. If you 
examine carefully, you may discover its reproduc- 
tion in some delicate shade of expression in your 
face. Every sound of discord or harmony that 
grates upon your ear or pleases your sense of beauty 
evidences your inner life somewhere. Not only so, 
but it demonstrates your growth in some particular 
direction. 

W T hile the senses are all exceedingly fallible, yet 
they are in such constant activity bearing their 
multitudinous impressions toward consciousness 
that they become responsible for much of what we 
are. While the eye sweeps over a wider field as 
to length and breadth, height and depth, yet the 
ear not only has its own world of sound, with di- 
mensions far greater than we are disposed to be- 
lieve, but it is the most exacting and critical of all 
the senses, and its messages to the inner life are 
correspondingly varied and delicate. 

Usually the eye generalizes ; usually the ear spe- 



" People al- 
ways dis- 
couraged 
and de- 
pressed do 
not succeed 
in anything 
but in being 
gloomy." 
Ralph 
Waldo 
Emerson 



208 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



" To feel 
beauty is 
better than 
to under- 
stand how 
you came to 
feel it." 

Santayana 



cializes. Specialization always makes deeper im- 
pressions upon consciousness. Sleeping life-forces 
may be awakened and active life-forces may be 
quickened by every sound or combination of sounds 
that falls upon the ear. The snarl of a dog may 
arouse, through suggestion, association and imita- 
tion, the cynicism of the lower nature. A sym- 
phony of Beethoven may start within you those 
marvelous concerts of the soul that give you some 
of your dreams of the better world. 

"For the expression of noble sentiments one 
must feel noble sentiments. " The capacity in some 
degree is always present. " To each grand func- 
tion of body corresponds a spiritual act. To each 
spiritual function corresponds a function of body." 
The universal love of beauty is one of the surest 
evidences of our kinship with divine perfections. 
Every work of art is monumental testimony of this 
sense. The love of loveliness is the unfathomed 
yearning of the soul for its normal harmonies, its 
normal manifestations. "It is the search for the 
eternal type." "Exterior gesture is a reverbera- 
tion of internal gesture." Every movement of 
body, every display of facial enlightenment, has 
its antecedent corresponding movement and form 
in spirit life. 

So true is it that beauty means goodness and 
ugliness means badness, that a really pretty face or 
an ugly one is a proof and a test of character. 
"Pretty," however, is not the word; certainly not 
in its ordinary acceptation. It carries with it a 
surface meaning which lacks the dignity of convey- 
ing the idea of genuine beauty. We have spoken 
of the senses. Merely pretty objects impress us 
rather through them than through spiritual facul- 
ties. Their action is modified by environment. 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 209 



Hence their impressions are not absolute. But en- 
vironment does not make your body or its manifes- 
tations of life ; it is only the opportunity of spirit 
for making use of sense -perceptions in building 
texture, form, and expression. 

Whatever you like through the senses stamps its 
approving forms all over the body. Whatever you 
dislike through the senses finds its expression of 
disapproval all over the body. A smile of appro- 
bation upon a wicked thing can not eventually add 
to loveliness of countenance. A frown of condem- 
nation upon a wicked thing cannot be altogether 
ugly nor creative of ugliness in the long run. 
Frowns have their places ; smiles have their misfits. 
Either, according to its application and soul-setting, 
may be constructive or destructive of beauty. The 
effect may not be apparent, just as a gentle flow of 
electricity is not apparent, but the charge comes 
by and by. 

While every environment and part of environ- 
ment in all the universe enter into your make-up, 
these things need not be your masters. They are 
meant to serve you, soul and body, through the 
body administering to the soul, the expression of 
the latter through the former being the inevitable 
consequence. Environment is the master of small 
minds. Whatever your surroundings, you may 
convert to the uses of strength and beauty the sun- 
shine and the shadow, the air and the sky, the soil 
and the rain. In proper relations to the material 
universe, all that is may become subservient to the 
dignities of life and character. All dignity of life 
and character exalts the mortal with the immortal. 



" The face is 
not the ex- 
pression of 
scientific 
thought or 
logical men- 
tal processes 
so much as 
of pure intui- 
tion." 

Steele 
Mack aye 



CHAPTER XXVI 

The Ideal, 
the Moral, 
the Plastic 



CHAPTER XXYI 



THE IDEAL, THE MORAL, THE PLASTIC 



For forty years Julius Caesar practised iu his 
own body the Greek physical culture and he could 
endure more than any man in his legions. But it 
was the Greek system without the Greek spirit. 
Blood and conquest were in every thought behind 
the physical regime. It was the preliminary drill 
for slaughter. It was not the culture of love but 
of dominion. It was not the dominion of liberty 
but of oppression. His spirit was animalized while 
his body should have been spiritualized. It exalted 
Eoman eagles rather than Eoman virtues. 

In an emergency the warrior and the pugilist will 
think of the biceps before they will consider the 
moral aspects of the action called for. This subor- 
dinates the higher nature to the lower. Food and 
drink, exercise and sunshine, may develop a muscle, 
but thought must control it and the soul -faculties 
must spiritualize it before it can have its greatest 
beauty or its enduring qualities. The pugilist and 
the gymnast are usually short-lived. " The quality 
of the thought in your mind sends a corresponding 
vibration over the nerves, which in turn registers a 
healthful or an injurious effect upon the body," 
and "every alteration in a man's style of being 
tends to express itself in every fiber, fluid, and 
movement." The change must be genuine in spirit 
to be genuine in its outer expression. No emphasis 
or repetition can accentuate too strongly the doc- 
213 



' ' Expres- 
sion is fea- 
ture in the 
process of 
making. 
With use 
and repeti- 
tion the 
passing* 
expression 
becomes 
permanent." 
D. H. Jacques 



214 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



« All mind 
and no 
matter is 
better than 
all matter 
and no 
mind." 
Rev. J. W. Lee 






trine that artificiality within can not establish trne 
external forms. Spnrions designs at heart go to 
the front in lip and cheek and eye. Invisible per- 
jury evolves visible mendacity. 

According to Gantier, "The law of formation is, 
that development of any part of the body is in 
direct proportion to the vital currents brought to 
bear upon it." a Any change of life or habits 
changes correspondingly the vital currents, and, 
while all the marks remain that distinguish us as 
a race, individual peculiarities may be greatly 
changed and even effaced." If mere food and ex- 
ercise would develop beauty without any attention 
to the mental and moral qualities that operate in- 
visibly upon the body, the prize-fighter would be 
the paragon of loveliness. He has special food, 
special exercise. What is the product of this par- 
ticular sustenance and this esoteric training ? Bru- 
tal jaw; ferocious eye ; taureanneck; sensual lips; 
knotted muscles ; the whole being animalized and 
all its expression on the plane of muscle. Go back 
of these and scrutinize his thoughts. They have 
been combative, belligerent, aggressive, heartless, 
animal, graceless like his body. He thinks out 
in straight lines — the lines of brutality and hate. 
His facial topography, stony, craggy, barren, is in 
keeping with it all. There is not a single noble 
purpose behind the whole regime, and therefore 
scarcely a single expression of nobility in the coun- 
tenance. 

Take a cultured man with a temperament easily 
yielding to environment and human amity. Give 
him the companionship of coarse people, subject 
him to thankless toil where the air is filled with 
foul moral odors, with poor physical and mental 
diet, hopelessly dooming him to these influences; 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 215 



the front of his brain will contract, the base of his 
brain will expand, the lower features will broaden 
and thicken, the eyes will grow dull and misan- 
thropic, the mouth will become coarser, the muscles 
denser and more animal, and his face will come to 
be far less expressive of his original culture. " The 
face reports rapidly and with terrible fidelity the 
progress of any struggle between good and evil." 
Indeed, "a man's bone and muscle come to be as 
his thought, and the very ligaments that vibrate to 
form his voice take their quality and tone from the 
sentiments that rule his heart." 

On the other hand, take a man whose life has 
been spent in the lowest orders of society ; surround 
him with influences for the cultivation of the 
esthetic virtues ; bring to bear all possible stimuli 
for the exercise of the affectional nature ; the hard- 
ened look will gradually disappear before the domi- 
nating springs of action. " The savage will be a 
savage no matter what company be keeps, " if he 
wants to be. Certainly he will be unless he is 
trained to grow away from his savagery through 
his own redeeming qualities of character, no matter 
what the civilizing forces may be from without. 

The capacity for evolution is inherent in the wild 
son of the forest. It is said that, no matter how 
foul the waters may become, a river will purify 
itself in a ten-mile flow. So of the stream of life. 
However filthy it may be, if left alone to work its 
way with all the divine attributes, uncontaminated 
further by sewer and cesspool, it will purge itself 
in its flow toward the ocean of love. 

In the Vedas, the sacred books of the Hindus, it 
is said that there is a passage the repetition of 
which will purify the soul. This heathen fiction is 
but a concrete formulation of one of the tenets of 



"Every 
thought- 
picture that 
is formed in 
the mind is 
accurately- 
registered in 
the corre- 
sponding 
part of man's 
body." 
Leander Ed- 
mund Whipple 



216 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



" Esthetic 
education is 
training- to 
see and 
express the 
maximum of 
beauty." 

S 'ant ay an a 



the Christian faith that man is essentially and eter- 
nally the image of God. "Form is the garb of sub- 
stance, " but in the human body form is animated 
by intelligence and illumined by divinity. Thought 
may not change a blue eye into a gray, nor a pug 
nose into one of Grecian contour ; but it can give 
to both a refined expression in the charm of which 
ill-favored irregularities are lost or forgotten. Be- 
sides, a nose is not ugly for being turned up or 
turned down, nor yet for being straight or crooked. 
Eyes have neither acquired nor forfeited their 
witchery for being blue or gray, black or brown. 
The love-lit flames that twinkle in them, the bright 
intelligences that shine out of their depths, the dear 
companionships that rest below the retina — these 
things give charm to the eyes regardless of their 
color. 

Woman is not lovely because of her face and 
form only — not for any or all of the bodily graces 
except as they are manifestations of the priceless 
treasures with which God has enriched female char- 
acter. If man could come to love more the invisi- 
ble spirit of truth, gentleness, modesty, patience, 
sweetness, in woman's character, instead of painted 
cheeks and crinkled locks, costly finger- rings and 
fancy laces, woman would cultivate more and more 
the spiritual qualities that distinguish her as the 
divinest creation of God. 

Beauty comprises three essentials: The ideal, 
the moral, the plastic. These answer to the deific 
attributes of wisdom, love and power. " Beauty is 
the robe of divinity and the privilege of angels." 
It is also the franchise of humanity. The statue 
is beauty of form. The painting is beauty of color. 
The overture is beauty of sounds. To all these 
man adds the indescribable charm of life, the puis- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 217 



sance of personality, the rhythm and poetry of mo- 
tion. Whoever realizes even approximately the 
grandenr of life and lives up to the measure of his 
conceptions, can not be anything but grand in physi- 
cal embodiment. No man can live as did Glad- 
stone or Phillips Brooks and have a repulsive coun- 
tenance. No man can spend his years as did George 
Washington without a broad philanthropy of fea- 
ture. No man could dwell for half a century in 
Thespian society, as did the elder Booth, where the 
real actor is the veritable character, where great 
and graceful emotions unceasingly pervade mind, 
soul, and body, without extraordinary sensitiveness 
of nerve, flexibility of tissue, and a high degree of 
facial exaltation. No man could experience the 
overwhelming spiritual revolution wrought in the 
life of St. Paul, confirmed by all his subsequent 
zeal and devotion, without the most radical chemi- 
cal changes in the fluids of the body and a corre- 
sponding transmutation of features. 

The countenance is the crypt language of the 
soul, the echo of the truths of spirit, the child visi- 
ble of the invisible mother-principle. Amphion 
built Thebes, the legend says, with the music of his 
lute, the stones leaping into their places in archi- 
tectural order from the impelling harmony of sweet 
sounds. Greater than Thebes is the architecture of 
the Temple Beautiful which you are. Sweeter than 
lute-note is the ineffable rhapsody of spirit drawing 
the superstructure of being into physical propor- 
tions. 

"Science gives bread; art gives ideals. Science 
ministers to the body ; art to the spirit. " Life is 
the one thing that embraces all science and illus- 
trates all art. 



"The finer 
may always 
be found in 
the coarser, 
but perpet- 
ual pure 
thought 
gives pure 
ideals." 
Leander Ed- 
mund Whipple 



CHAPTER XXVII 
The Triumph of 
Cosmic Force 
Over Organic 
Force 



CHAPTER XXYII 



THE TRIUMPH OF COSMIC FORCE OVER ORGANIC 
FORCE 

"The face is the title-page of the soul. It tells 
the contents of the volume. " Here men may read 
strange matters. It may not tell precisely what is 
written on the margin, but it indicates the style, 
the diction, the rhetoric, the subject-matter. 
Habitual mental states crowd out every passing 
mood and become the dictators of expression. An 
ugly face animated by a pure heart, sublimated by 
a chaste spirit, exalted by noble purposes, can not 
remain uninviting. Ungainly muscular develop- 
ment and movement are the belongings of sav- 
agery. They are the survival of animal predomi- 
nance, the insistence of physical supremacy. 

Weeds will grow in any garden that is untended. 
They come on the winds and in the rain. Grace- 
lessness is the sure inheritance of a neglected body, 
which always stands for a neglected mind. Ac- 
tivity is the shibboleth of development. Give 
daily attention to your body, from corn to coiffure. 
Give daily attention to your soul, from the lowest 
impulses that rise and surge through consciousness 
to the visions, almost seraphic, that make immor- 
tality a present realization, the union with the 
Father a conscious joy, and open to view the bright- 
glinting prophecies of a thousand years hence. 

" Upon the features the fine chisels of thought 
and emotion are eternally at work." Expressional 
221 



"Were the 
roadways 
between 
souls open 
avenues, 
there would 
be no pro- 
tection to 
the person- 
ality." 

Moses True 

Brow t* 



222 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"We try to 
rest in 
instruments 
and media 
below which 
we ought 
to discover 
ideal 
beauty." 
J. T. Jacob 



qualities do not float about on the surface as lint 
blown by the wind. They are not merely external 
accretions. All the sources of beauty lie deep in 
the soul. It is wise, therefore, to keep the body 
engaged in something commensurate with spirit- 
ual dignity. There is a certain firmness of lip and 
harmony of feature after duty performed ; a certain 
rhythm of motion after soul culture ; a certain en- 
nobled appearing after pure thinking; a certain 
spiritualized seeming after worship. Inertia of 
spirit invariably leaves the muscles vapid and 
empty of expressional force. 

One ought to carry in his vest-pocket a photo- 
graph of his soul. He ought to look at it often, 
and from it often turn to the original. It is inter- 
esting for a finely endowed creature to walk out of 
his ordinary life, turn about and look at himself 
awhile. It is profitable to "see oursel's as ithers 
see us," though "ithers" are oftener wrong than 
right in their judgments of us. But it makes us in- 
trospective to ourselves and charitable to others; 
and every time we hold a really noble thought of 
another, or entertain a generous purpose with refer- 
ence to him, "a line of sweetness comes into the 
face, and, with frequent repetition, is engraved 
there." 

"The body holds its form and substance and 
countenance from the soul. It is held out of and 
separate from the general mass of matter by the 
soul. When let loose by the soul, it disappears in 
the organism. There is a triumph of cosmic force 
over organic force." Herbert Spencer speaks of 
the eternal energy whence all things proceed and 
by which all organisms are constructed. But differ- 
ence in technology or nomenclature does not change 
the principle. Swedenborg declares that "the hu- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 223 



man body with all its parts and functions is elabo- 
rated from the soul, and therefore corresponds to it 
in every particular of structure, form, and use." 
All bodily motion is an escape of psychic energy at 
once transformed into growth and grace, if it is 
natural in the highest sense. Different kinds of 
form and motion result from different qualities of 
dynamic stimuli within. All invisible forms that 
become known at all are made manifest through 
terms of matter— sound, form, color, motion. In 
the cultivation of intrinsic values, in the welcome 
we give to the ethereal whisperings of spirit, in 
the vindication of truth, love, virtue, honor made 
in our judgments, in the affection we cherish for 
country, home, liberty, humanity, God — in the ex- 
ercise of all majestic inner qualities, the agents of 
expression move in harmony and toward the ideal. 

In the Arabian Nights there is a magnetic moun- 
tain that draws the nails out of approaching ships, 
so that the vessels fall to pieces without ever reach- 
ing the shore. There are in life gigantic uplifts of 
lodestone attracting the nails from bow and beam 
and rudder in every human craft ; but the lode- 
stone is earthy, and pulls only earthward. There 
are also whole systems of mountains as high as 
heaven drawing from earth and air and sky and 
from the spirit world the elements of grand living, 
reposing their forces in soul and body, attracting 
every bark into the anchorage. No vessel need 
have its sails torn, or its masts broken, or its hull 
leaking, or its flukes dislodged. 

Off the coast of Norway, the old Norse sailors 
say, are fifty maelstroms roaring, whirling, boiling, 
seething, engulfing all that comes into their vicin- 
ity. Along the shores of being are half a hundred 
vortices— gusts of desire pelting the seaman's face 



"Nature in 
man is far 
stronger 
than man in 
nature. 
Hence the 
first notion 
of volition 
is toward 
the body." 

Dr. A. A. 

Lipscomb 



224 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"And I 
smiled to 
think God's 
greatness 
flowed 
around our 
incomplete- 
ness, 'round 
our restless- 
ness His 
rest." 

Mrs. 

Browning 



with their sands ; swirls of rage swallowing up the 
virtues whose white sails appear ; abysms of passion 
dashing the salt spray into the eyes of manhood ; 
billows of cruelty rolling over the charities ; laby- 
rinths of defilement engorging soul and body. But 
there are life-boats, and light-houses, and life-saving 
stations. They are in the essential, intrinsic endow- 
ments of spirit endued with power to stand the 
storm and deliver the souls of men. 

Upon the shore are Sinon and the Wooden Horse, 
but your citadel is a nobler structure than that of 
Troy. The harpies do not everywhere defile your 
tables. The oracles are doubtful or double only to 
those who listen doubtfully or doubly. Wind and 
weather are always propitious to the character craft. 
The earnest soul is self-propelling. Despite the 
maelstrom, it rides through the swirl in safety. 
Like the sailor of the Indian Ocean, it catches 
from afar the odors of the sandal-wood and 
knows that the islands of sweet spices lie in its 
path. 

"It is everywhere the internal life that deter- 
mines the external form of things. The soul shapes 
the body, and not the body the soul." "The soul, 
modified in its manifestations and subject to con- 
stant impression from various objects by which it 
is surrounded, builds up the body and changes it at 
will to conform to its own changing character and 
wants. Concentration of thought upon any part of 
the body increases the temperature and the flow of 
blood to that part. " 

It is the testimony of Dr. John Hunter, the world- 
renowned surgeon, and of the eminent Johann 
Mueller, that any state may be induced in any part 
of the body by constant intention. They hold to 
the doctrine that bad thoughts are the generators 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 225 



of toxic elements in the fluids of the body. Surely 
your expression is a crystallization of your thoughts. 
Whenever those passions that war with purity begin 
to stir in the life, the face at once descends to a 
level with them. It is inevitable that man's spir- 
itual nature should minister to his physical life — 
should impress itself upon and express itself through 
the physical supports. 

It was the teaching of the Master that bodily ex- 
istence can not be maintained by material nourish- 
ment alone, but that spiritual pabulum must give 
it the finest proportions and the most healthful 
functions. "Go and sin no more" carries with it 
not only the cure of disease but the banishment of 
deformity. The subordination of man's spirit to 
the Archetypal Spirit is the all-embracing prereq- 
uisite to refined expression. The surrender of the 
divine mind to Satanic obsession will misshape the 
manliest form in all the world and despoil the saint- 
liest face among men. Those possessed of devils in 
the olden time were not beautiful. There was too 
much commotion within to have peaceful expres- 
sion without. Their faces were immediately and 
permanently modified for grace and harmony when 
the evil spirits had been cast out of them. The 
restoration of internal equipoise left the soul to 
make its own plastiques in face and form. 

Mary Magdalene, her heart cast down with sor- 
row unappeasable, her face wrung with grief, was 
more beautiful when looking through tears into the 
tomb of the Master than when, with soul in agony 
and body in torture and eyes pleading, she called 
upon her Lord to eject the demons that possessed 
her. Before his conversion, St. Paul's face had the 
aggressiveness of cruelty; afterward, the aggres- 
siveness of love. The look of Judas was hard, 
15 



"Hearts 
that are 
great beat 
never loud ; 
they muffle 
their music 
as they 
come." 

Father 
Ryan 



226 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



" Beauty is 
God's hand- 
writing- — a 
wayside 
sacrament." 
John Milton 



commercial, hypocritical— the soul's picture of the 
man. The face of St. Peter was bold, rugged, im- 
pulsive, like his inner life. The countenance of 
St. John was calm, peaceful, affectionate, trustful, 
saintly — the sponsor of his loving heart. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

Man a Great 
Spiritual Spend- 
thrift 



CHAPTER XXVIII 



MAN A GREAT SPIRITUAL SPENDTHRIFT 



Is life worth living? Schopenhauer says "no." 
But God has looked upon life and pronounced it 
good, and I would rather have His judgment than 
Schopenhauer's. It is a miserable conception of 
the high purposes of being, a slander upon the in- 
trinsic value of the soul, and blasphemy against 
the Creator to say that life is not worth living. No 
such question can emanate except from sordid mind 
and abnormal soul. It may not be worth the while 
to live as some people do live, but it is the kind of 
living and not the life that is to be condemned. 

There is no millstone about the neck of manhood 
or womanhood dragging it continuously and hope- 
lessly down. Spiritual forces are undergirt with in- 
finity. When the eaglet begins to fly, the mother- 
bird coaxes it from the crag and then spreads her 
own broad tips beneath the untried wings. When- 
ever the spirit of man would rise, it does not 
beat the air alone. The soul has never been shorn 
of its power, nor has access to the oracles of God 
ever been forbidden. We may disparage present 
conditions but never present possibilities. As there 
is no tree so dead but the woodbine and the ivy will 
cling to it and relieve it of its bleakness, so there is 
no old human hulk of a body but the soul may 
twine about it the love-vine and the climbing rose. 
Not only so, but there is no physical wreck which 
may not be set in better order by the soul 's concord 
within it. 



"No 

esthetic 
value is 
founded 
on the 
expression 
or sugges- 
tion of evil." 
Santayana 



230 BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 



" Science 
shows that 
the soul does 
not dwell in 
one part of 
the nervous 
system 
alone. 
Every 
ganglion is 
a center of 
soul life." 

Dr. Paul 
Carus 



Man is a great spiritual spendthrift. So richly 
endowed is he, indeed, that he grows careless of the 
conservation of his divine energies. And yet there 
are miserable estimates upon him everywhere — 
everywhere outside of heaven and hell ; these places 
hold him at high levy. One of the most dispara- 
ging computations of a man's value is to appraise 
him at so many pounds sterling — to assess his worth 
at $600 a year ! $1, 000 ! $5, 000 ! $50, 000 !— proposi- 
tions made and accepted every day, and that, too, 
with the financial idea absorbing and dominating 
every other consideration. The features learn 
almost to jingle with the sound of coin instead of 
moving with the rhythm of inner sympathies and 
supernal graces. 

It is still more calamitous to a man's face for him 
to feel that his wealth in government bonds, rail- 
road stocks, lands, or money is his greatest posses- 
sion. It is an appalling condition for one to be in 
if he can rest all his mental operations on the small 
disc of a dollar. There can be no greater disaster 
to the human face than for its owner to have more 
gold than character. One can live with money and 
love money and its equivalents till he will grow 
callous to all the world, till his sympathies and 
affections are coated over with gold foil. 

Wet a strip of blotting paper in a solution of 
ammoniacal silver nitrate and place it anywhere in 
the vicinity of a bowl of mercury. Within a short 
time the vapor of mercury will deposit itself on the 
paper so as to be readily detected. Somehow the 
character of man, if he stays too long in touch with 
gold, draws the yellow metal into his very compo- 
sition, becoming miserly in his affections and his 
exterior expression. Not only so, but human life 
seems to have with many forms of evil certain affin- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 231 



ities without contact or immediate association, so 
that the invisible effluvia from their presence settles 
upon the heart. 

There are few influences that chill the affectional 
nature more rapidly than that of money. When- 
ever love rests upon coin, you may look for frost 
upon the soul. Greed invariably lowers the tem- 
perature of human sympathies. Avarice closes 
one's eyes to his brother's need — even to his broth- 
er's woe. It often drops the fraternal sense to 
zero, where, like the fabled salamander, frozen in 
its own blood, the ice-man may live in fire and not 
feel its warmth. 

To buy and sell is not all of life. Tyre and 
Sidon did this. Whenever a man detaches himself 
from his kind to love only gold, or attaches himself 
to his kind for the one purpose of getting gain, he 
has shut up his soul unto himself, stifled the broader 
sympathies of brotherhood, and immolated his coun- 
tenance at the miser's sanctuary. Ensconced in his 
little retreat with his shekels, he soon absorbs all the 
vitality in his surrounding atmosphere and withers 
like a rose under a bell jar. 

The lower uses of the body are incidental and 
secondary. God creates soul and body and then 
gives the physical over to the sovereignty of the 
spiritual life. You are to keep it clean, feed it, 
and preserve it. You are to live in it and speak 
through it. You are to materialize in it the graces 
Adam felt in Eden. The body is the weather- 
gage of the soul. It indicates the action of the 
elements within. The soul is the barometer of the 
body. It registers the coming storm in the line of 
least resistance. 

While all parts of the physical man are con- 
stantly impressed by mind, the skin is an especial 



"The 
esthetic 



nurtured on 

beauty 

keeps before 

the minds of 

men and 

nations a 

proper ideal 

of life." 
Leander Ed- 
mund Whipple 



F* 



232 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"No man is 
great by 
imitation ; 
each may- 
rise of his 
own powers 
till he leaves 
vultures 
and eagles 
behind." 

Rassefas 



sufferer from morbid mental states. Eeckless ex- 
travagance in the misapplication of powers designed 
for the soul, but settled upon the body, bankrupts 
the life, and leaves destitution in all the organism. 
As poverty is generally indicated in the clothing, 
so is it especially manifested in the covering na- 
ture has given the physical being. Cazanave de- 
clares that the twenty-eight miles of pores in the 
body may be clogged by strong emotions, the en- 
gorged capillaries not only throwing back the poi- 
sonous excrement upon the other depurating organs, 
but becoming a nesting-place for germs. Contrari- 
wise, love puts upon the skin a celestial rosy-red. 
If hatred gives it a livid whiteness, gentle emotions 
impart a velvety smoothness. If jealousy colors 
the pigment green, faith restores its clearness. If 
anger clouds it, repose of mind clears it. If worry 
brings its corrugations, peace tends to banish the 
wrinkles. 

Everything is spiritual prodigality that breaks 
up the normal adjustment of soul and body. The 
uses which the soul makes of the body are scarcely 
less important than the uses which the body makes 
of the soul. While physical cleanliness is abso- 
lutely essential to beauty, soap and water on the 
mind occasionally might result in intellectual clear- 
ness, and there might be times when a little car- 
bolic acid on the doubtful places of the soul would 
be wholesome disinfection. Until the time of 
Elizabeth, royalty rarely bathed. They painted 
over the dirt. The character of royalty was var- 
nished in the same way. The sloven is externally a 
symbol of what he is internally. Spiritual squan- 
derings have made nations savages. When the 
negroes of the upper Nile behold a pleasing sight, 
they rub their stomachs and smile. It is the sign 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 233 



of their ideal pleasure. As the basis of this ideal 
is purely physical, so the smile itself is auimal. 
When delighted, the Greenlander imitates the act 
of chewing and swallowing. It is his superlative 
expression of pleasure. His face is made of fish- 
oil and bear's grease animated by a low order of 
intelligence. 

The Comanche's loftiest conception of beauty is 
gaudiness of color — the blood-red being his first 
choice. He delights in extravagant crests and 
plumes ; his music is limited to a few notes, and, 
like every conquered race, he sings in a minor key. 
Yet, notwithstanding the limitations of savagery, 
this Memnon of the plains begins every day with 
song. He is always singing when the sunrise greets 
the world. It is an effort, crude though it be, to- 
ward the realization of beauty — a search after the 
soul's ideals. After the spiritual waste of ages, it 
is the unburied part of his nature asserting his 
estheticism through all his savagery. His erect 
figure is the result of his intractable courage. His 
stoical expression grew in the soil of outraged 
humanities. The spendthrifts of civilization have 
built the glory of one race upon the spoils of an- 
other. 

No bent form can be beautiful ; certainly not in 
youth, and it should have no place in age. Curves 
and arcs are out of concord here. Hogarth's line 
of beauty can not commend itself everywhere. An 
unstable figure can not be imposing, nor can a mor- 
ally unstable character show to the world a body 
that will long remain in stable equilibrium. Free 
moral agency makes man the architect of his own 
physical temple. Materials, tools, skill are all 
given. The structure must rise under the direction 
of the individual will. It must be dedicated by 



" To him 
who lives 
well, cheer- 
ful without 
levity, pious 
without 
enthusiasm, 
every form 
of life is 
good." 

Dr. Samuel 
Johnson 



234 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Emotion 

always 

tends to 

produce 

motion, and 

when 

extreme, 

always does 

produce it." 
Herbert 
Spencer 



personal qualities. It must be consecrated to holy 
service, for you not only worship in this temple, 
but beyond where the veil is rent you are the priest 
over sacred things. 

Every castle is a little inferior to the air-castle. 
It may symbolize well the ideal structure, but it is, 
after all, only a symbol. The material can not 
stand for the ideal perfectly in this world. But 
when God made you, the invisible model was Him- 
self. What dignities were revealed in man ushered 
into existence by such a Designer on such a Model ! 
What powers of infinite growth and expansion lie 
buried in the ruins of the race! Degeneracy is 
only a question of yielding to extraneous influence. 
Ideal attainment is found in the assertion of the 
divine forces over the earthy nature — the acquisi- 
tion of pure selfhood. Our first parents were 
tempted, and they fell. That was Paradise Lost. 
Christ was tempted, and he prevailed. That was 
Paradise Eegained. His victories attained are our 
triumphs in potential. 

Man was made master over this world. Sover- 
eignty, dominion, kingship — these were the terms 
of his commission. Over what is he master to-day? 
He has spent himself till he doubts his title to di- 
vine inheritances. He stands fearful and trem- 
bling in the presence of those forces he was made 
lord of, and this with the power residing within 
him to have dominion over all the earth. Augus- 
tus Caesar, with the globe in bas-relief upon his 
shield, is the only man in history whose coat of 
arms is commensurately symbolic of his regal 
nature. And yet, like the Caesars, man is con- 
stantly making new adventures into realms of 
speculation, building up political pantisocracies 
and dreaming of new conquests beyond the Eiver 






BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 235 

Ocean, spending his spiritual legacy in conquests 
of blood and avarice. 

Charlemagne sat on a throne for two hundred 
and fifty years after his death, full-panoplied as 
king. We need not wait for the grave and the 
scepter of the catacombs. Man's throne is the 
coronal chair of the wide earth. He need not 
create artificial empires. The kingdom of heaven 
is already within him. 

A flock of geese were struck by a storm. They 
were driven apart, scattered by the winds and 
buffeted by torrents of raio. At the mercy of 
every gust, they beat their wings in helplessness 
through the disturbed elements. They had the 
power to rise above the tempest and to float away 
peacefully beyond it. But they were geese. 

Man is scarcely less pitiable in his self-imposed 
impotence. Here he flounders in rage; there he 
writhes in paroxysms of violence; yonder he 
twitches in convulsions of wrath. Everywhere he 
drives through tempests of passion. And all this 
while his native element is the sunshine and the calm 
above the clouds. These forces of evil, despoiling 
in the midst of the powers that may defy them, are 
drawn toward the life by the low barometer of the 
soul. The curse of sin, like the vortical whirl of 
the tornado, follows the line of least resistance, de- 
vouring, mutilating, disgorging. As the face of 
Nature is bruised and lacerated by meteorological 
disturbances, so is the face of man by turbulency of 
soul. 

" Carry any kind of thought you please around 
with you, and so long as you retain it, no matter 
where you roam, on land or sea, you will unceas- 
ingly attract to yourself, knowingly or inadvert- 
ently, exactly and only what corresponds to your 



"The plain- 
est face 
becomes 
beautiful in 
noble and 
radiant 
moods." 

Newell 
Dwight 
Hillis 



' ' Every pas- 
sion gives a 
particular 
cast to the 
counte- 
nance." 
Jeremy Collier 



236 BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 

dominant quality of thought." If they are 
thoughts of peace, peace will come to you from 
every source and rest upon your face. If they are 
thoughts of war, the belligerent aspect of things will 
encounter you on every hand, and the scars of bat- 
tle will mark and mar your features. 

The effortless life is the fruitless life. If you 
strive, love is stronger than hate. If you strive 
not, hate is stronger than love. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

Not the Tech- 
nique, but the 
Pure Art of 
Living 



CHAPTER XXIX 



NOT THE TECHNIQUE BUT THE PURE ART OF 
LIVING 

Man is as responsible for his face as for his debts. 
Nature never cancels his obligation for either. But 
no life need starve for psychic nourishment. " Opu- 
lence is the law of the universe." Wealth of mind 
and treasure of soul are our eternal possessions. A 
corresponding wealth of expressional agents and 
treasure of facial design are ours so long as there 
exists a union of soul and body. All life's laws 
operate toward perfection. Otherwise Omniscience 
is a misnomer, Omnipotence a weakling. 

Every susceptibility of the human composition 
opens the being to happiness, and happiness is 
everywhere where the soul is at home to the psychic 
guests that gather in to hold sweet converse. Sin- 
cerity and fidelity of interpretation by the body are 
the evidences everywhere. It bears repetition that 
absolute external counterfeit is impossible, that 
Nature has no real shams, that the soul can perpe- 
trate no cozenage upon its physical supports, that 
outer integrity surreptitiously assumed is rebuked 
by the true spirit whose sovereignty is supreme 
and whose sway is held over the body with more 
than the divine right of a king. 

Moral rectitude and moral obliquity have been 
making faces at each other through all the ages. 
Man's joy in beauty is his own expression of de- 
light in God's work — his satisfaction in his own 
239 



"Ancestry 
counts for 
something 
but not 
much. De- 
velopment 
is always an 
individual 
matter." 

Dr. Nathan 
Oppenheim 



240 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



1 * I have 
never found 
the explana- 
tion of 
things in 
things. 
There are 
two great 
mysteries — 
God and I." 
J. T. Jacob 



idealities — his affinity for primal graces. The fals- 
est man on earth despises falsehood. The appeal 
from mendacity is always toward the higher self 
that sees intuitively and feels truth rather than 
discerns it. In the deep of being, beyond philoso- 
phy and induction, life is so grand that the thought 
of it is thrilling. 

We try to be satisfied with the technique instead 
of the pure art of living. "We skim along over the 
surface of being as if milk were the only metaphor. 
We accept life as we find it rather than make life 
what it promises. No art is true that represents 
things as they really exist, unless it be the art of 
imitation. All original, creative art, if, indeed, 
there be such art, rests on the ideal and strives to 
set it forth in terms of its own unhampered tech- 
nique and materials. In the final analysis, all art 
is imitative. Only God creates in the absolute. 
Man approaches Him according as he gives free 
reception to the guests that come from the spirit- 
world and according as lie gives liberty to the crea- 
tive powers of the soul. 

No author is true to nature if he writes men as 
they are, unless he be simply a historian. Men as 
they are, are bad enough ; as they are capable of 
becoming, they are good enough. For, while every 
man is the repository of infinite possibilities, per- 
fection does not imply infinity in any human attri- 
bute. Development is the one infinite thing attach- 
ing to human evolution. From one perfection to 
another perfection the rounds of the ladder mount. 

Except where he has dealt with historical char- 
acters as such, Shakespeare is not true to life un- 
less he has made ideal men and women. Whoever 
makes characters, except as a mere copyist, must 
write men and women with transcendent qualities. 






BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 241 

Nature and despoiled nature are vastly different 
things. No life is true that lives below its own 
ideals, that does not live up to those within reach 
and constantly approach those that evade the pres- 
ent grasp. No ideals are true if they drop below 
the divinest conceptions. If men can take up pen 
and ink, brush and pigment, mallet and marble, 
mortar and trowel, and with these things build after 
model conceptions, surely they can with soul and 
body, spirit and organized matter, fashion after 
perfect ideals. 

The invisible finds its way not only into muscle 
and countenance, but into man's Bandiwork — spirit 
projecting itself into the material forms fashioned 
by human hands. Not only so, but in every case 
it carries into the dead forms of matter the indi- 
vidual character and even the facial resemblance 
of the projector. Salvator Eosa was a buffoon, a 
jester, a reveler, a counterfeiter of feeling. His 
pictures abound in gloom and horror. The color- 
ing is somber gray and the work is lacking in the 
finished touches of the master. His face was de- 
generate like his work. Fra Angelico, who, it is 
said, never harbored an impure thought, whose life 
of prayer and tears was less concerned with things 
of this world than with the spiritual forces of the 
other, left upon his pictures the stamp of holy con- 
ceptions ; the colors were modest and chaste, while 
the work was characterized by ideal delicacy of 
execution. "There is no pure passion that can be 
understood or painted except by pureness of heart. 
The foul or blunt feeling will see itself in every- 
thing and set down blasphemies. " 

Cousin is right that the true artist addresses him- 
self less to the senses than to the soul. Euskin is 
authority for the statement that irreverent, sensual 
16 



"The higher 

the emotion 

the more 

complex the 

motion that 

expresses 

it." 

Moses 

True 

Brown 



242 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"The body 
is but the 
manifesta- 
tion of the 
soul, the ex- 
ternal vary- 
ing with the 
internal 
variations." 
T. M. Balliet 



painters invariably give their paintings the color- 
ing of gloom devoid of spiritual tone. Their faces 
have with equal fidelity shown their irreverence 
and sensuality. The power in man to conceive an 
ideal makes him long to live it. Living it inter- 
nally, without exception he represents it externally. 
All art is pscyhic in its essentials, and all its pro- 
ductions must have a psychic expression, whether 
they be concrete mosaics made with the hands or 
features builded by the attributes of the soul. 

Dante's face, tho nobility rested upon it, never- 
theless embodied a certain grotesque and awful 
grandeur like the images he created. Dore's illus- 
trations have in them the Dantesqueness of both 
men. Luther's face was set with the courage of 
divinely wrought convictions. It bore the con- 
trasts of independence and fraternity, of aggres- 
siveness with affection, of revolution with devotion. 
Melancthon's face had the paleness of the lamp and 
the thinking look of the schoolmen. The face of 
Erasmus was delicately sweet, with a lurking sar- 
casm that made him a terror to his foes. Voltaire's 
face, with a life in many ways the double of Me- 
lancthon's, bore the same marks of the reformer's, 
with added irreverence. Milton's face was mas- 
sive, symmetrical, stately, like his Paradise Lost; 
hopeful, sunny, glorious, like ihis Paradise Ee- 
gained. The face of Diogenes was pinched, con- 
stricted, snarly, a narrow little territory of counte- 
nance like his tub. The face of Mahomet was art- 
ful, Machiavellian, visionary, like his dreams. 
Cromwell's face was broad, open, sincere, like his 
principles. 



CHAPTER XXX 

Ask the Souls 
as They Pass By; 
They Can Tell 
You 



T 



CHAPTER XXX 



ASK THE SOULS AS THEY PASS BY; THEY CAN 
TELL YOU 

The faces of the multitude show the physiog- 
nomy of the streuuous life. The nerve- stretching, 
nerve-snapping tension of the age misdirects the 
vital force, exhausts the supply of Nature, burns 
out the oil of life and leaves the body anemic and 
the face blase. 

The rush for money, the accentuation of self and 
selfishness, the forgetting of fraternity, the grasp- 
ing for place and power, the dress and the stress of 
social functions, the travail of fashionable conven- 
tionalities, the prostitution of the statutes of Nature 
to the demands of fast living — these influences per- 
meating and infiltrating the body, with the soul 
pigmented and incrustated underneath, convert the 
inhabitants of the holy kingdom of manhood and 
womanhood into the lotus-eaters of God — lotus- 
eaters whose faces are blank with f orgetfulness of 
native land, and whose countenances retain but 
little of the splendors of divine heredity. 

Take a position on the street corner and watch 
the throng go by. "There are features scarred 
by sickness, dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by 
passion, pinched by poverty, shadowed by sorrow, 
branded by remorse, broken down by labor, tor- 
tured by disease, dishonored by foul uses— bodies 
full of the sin of youth, the heavens revealing their 
iniquity, the earth rising up against them, the root 
245 



"The mind 
needs 
removal of 
waste just as 
much, as the 
body does." 

Dr. A. A. 

Lipscomb 



T 



" There is 
tlie face of 
good-nature, 
of wicked- 
ness, of 
serenity, of 
storm, of 
fraternity, 
of malevo- 
lence." 

Montaigne 



246 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

dried up beneath and the branches cut off above, 
intellects without power, hearts without hope, 
minds earthly and devilish. " 

Scrutinize these faces as they file past. Mne out 
of ten are careworn. Ninety-nine out of a hundred 
are going at the pace that kills. Eelaxation is an 
unknown or forgotten term in their vocabulary. 
Eepose is rare. Lassitude is common. Strain and 
rush and grasping are upon the age and in the fea- 
tures. We live more on the earthy side of being in 
a day than Nature has ever allotted to any twenty- 
four hours. Spirit gets behind in the mad speed 
that outstrips civilization, and all the race is warped 
into consequent distortions. 

Here is a countenance turgid as a river burst- 
ing its banks. The swollen tides of disappointment 
can not be contained. Here is another barren as 
the desert. There is no bloom or fruitage in it. 
The very oases seem parched. 

You shrink from the next one. Why? There 
is an insinuating menace in it. But that one com- 
ing up behind beams like a May morning. How 
refreshing its smile! You follow it. You would 
like to have its loveliness linger upon you. It 
seems not to be lost in the strenuous unrest of the 
throng. 

Here is another. It has a strange compositeness 
about it. It reminds you of a December sunset : it 
is radiant, but it is cold ; it has a chill glory rest- 
ing over it, its frosty grandeur passing into the twi- 
light. What splendid storms it holds ! 

There goes another as rosy as the dawn, its new- 
risen sun flooding you with its young light. The 
next one is closed like a banker's safe. You can 
not read the combination. What wealth is locked 
up in the Bessemer features! 






BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 247 

That face yonder is cloudy, portentous. You 
feel a gathering clamminess as it sweeps past you. 
From the next pair of eyes the lightnings are flash- 
ing zigzag, and the thunders of passion seem roll- 
ing from the brow. He belongs with the tempestu- 
ous life in front of him. 

There goes a rugged profile. It suggests the 
mountains and cliffs and chasms. It has strength 
and majesty and picturesqueness. It has been 
ground against the rocks and hollowed by the flints 
of war. But it has drunk the mountain air, clear, 
invigorating, purifying. There is manliness in it. 

There is a babe. Its soul presses through its face 
like the tints in the lily's cup. Its little feet meas- 
ure four paces to the lady's one. It is brimming 
with curiosity, eyes open wide, gazing at every- 
thing that makes impression on its new life. It is 
smiling, pleased at the nervous thrill which the 
multitude of bright objects produces upon the sen- 
sitive plate of the baby mind. The mother is lead- 
ing it — where? 

Here comes an old man, drooped, wrinkled, 
tottering, but at a snail's pace forging his way 
through the throng, adding the stress of artificial 
life to his years. Here is another; it is a noble 
face. The manliness of manhood rests upon it. It 
is full of strength and hope. There goes a little 
girl, her hair sweeping her shoulders like threads 
of gold, her step so light that sorrow seems never 
to have laid hand upon her. Her face is radiant 
with a glory that throws sunshine back into the 
face of the sun. But another rushes along, passing 
between you and the child. You shrug your shoul- 
ders. It is an instinctive quirk caught from the 
man's own idiosyncrasy. 

There go some youths brazen with pride and as- 



"The more 
harmonious 
the body the 
more natural 
and varied 
the expres- 
sion." 

Emily 
Bishop 



248 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Encourage 
attitudes 
that are 
sympathetic, 
royal, and 
significant 
of spiritual 
heroism, and 
you will 
foster the 
sentiments 
which these 
attitudes 
symbolize." 

Mrs. E. N. 

Poulson 



surance. Yonder are others shrinking from the 
gaze of the throng. Here is the policeman drag- 
ging some poor wretch toward the bastile. The 
victim's face is bruised; he is muttering curses; 
there is brimstone in his look. 

There is as an old woman. The weight of three- 
score years and ten is upon her bent form. She 
hands you a slip of paper telling you why she is 
begging alms. There is a gentleness in the soft 
blue eye which age and poverty can not obliterate. 
There is a sweetness in her voice that makes you 
listen for its music. There is a motherly seeming 
in her manner. You think of home for the home- 
less, drop a coin and some love into the trembling 
old hand, and she is gone. 

The priest smiles and bows ; his stately gait awes 
you. You think of mass and the masses. You 
wonder what darkened the next face. It wears 
mourning. You can not see it well, but it is pale 
and worn. Something has gone out of its life — 
some companionable soul is absent. You wish the 
whole world could veil its sorrows. Here is the 
rustle of silks — a countenance passing sweet, and 
lips whose curves might serve as models for Cupid's 
bow. But following close is a mouth whose malig- 
nity might stand as a model for scorn. 

Instinctively you move forward toward the next 
face. How restful the benevolence that greets you 
from the eyes ! The whole expression is so benign, 
so gentle, so inviting. If the world were only full 
of these ! 

Here are two faces — what contrasts! The one 
bears blasphemies, the other blessings. That one 
swaggering along over there has lived in the alleys 
of life. His face has a scavenger seeming. Here 
are some children old before their time. They were 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 249 



born with wrinkles of crime upon them. They are 
cursing and quarreling over a cigar-stump picked 
up in the gutter. Waifs of the soul ! Somebody- 
must answer for these travesties of child-life. 

There goes a good Samaritan. The charities are 
resting all over her countenance. She stoops and 
addresses herself to some street-urchins — something 
about free lunch and God and work in the garden. 
The next face is totally blank. There is nothing in 
it to read. This one is so complex that you might 
as well undertake to decipher the cuneiform inscrip- 
tions on an Assyrian tablet. 

In the center of the avenue is a group of laborers 
pounding stones. The stripes are on their bodies 
and in their faces. Crime has set its own mark on 
the brow. The next face passing gives you relief. 
It bears such peace of expression that your soul is 
rested while you gaze upon it. It looks like an- 
swered prayers. You think of altar and chancel 
and anthem. 

How you pity the approaching stare of idiocy ! 
Time's tragedy is in that void. Where is the light, 
and who put it out f But you turn from this to the 
physiognomy where the brow has warning in it and 
threatening beneath it. What portents are there ! 
Its shadows seem to darken the sunlight about you. 
What repose is in the next ! It is as calm as Gali- 
lee after some "Peace, be still! " 

There is one that looks as if it loved darkness 
rather than light. It is night, midnight, with not 
the streak of a single sunbeam across it. The next 
is a sad picture. It is set in shame. Think chari- 
tably as it glides past you. There is magnetism in 
the next face — not of power or personality, but of 
innocence. You feel that a shadow has never fallen 
across it. But the shadows are chasing at her heels ; 



"The 

human face 
never 

expresses a 
single 
elementary 
meaning ; its 
expressions 
are always 
compound." 
. Edmund 
Shaftesbury 



250 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

it is the libertine pressing close behind her. You 

suppress a shriek of horror. You want to cry for 

the police. 

There goes a common type. The • brow is knit 

...^ _ with many a seam. The features are drawn and 

"Th. b d corrugated. The eye is anxious but lusterless. Fi- 

in mastery uancial disaster has done its work within and with- 

means out. 

What a visage is the next ! You shudder. You 

iC y» wonder what manner of demon has possessed the 

man. You will see him in your dreams to-night, 
means J & 

animal ^ n n * s glance are cold, steely daggers that make 

expression." you shiver and dread his approach, tho you 

Mantegazza know he is not going to harm you. The whole 

t— physiognomy looks as if it had been fashioned by 

Pluto. As he comes nearer you feel more and 

more uncomfortable. As he brushes past you, you 

cannot control the nervous rigor that agitates you, 

soul and body. He is a murderer. 

You turn away, still shuddering, and glance down 
the street. Half a block away a restful face is mov- 
ing in your direction. It is easily distinguished as 
the most lovely of all that wind in and out and 
along through the multitude. It is more and more 
charming as it approaches you. You are drawn 
irresistibly by its loveliness. The features rise in 
majesty as they become more distinct to view. 
Heart throbs through that countenance. The affec- 
tions are there, pure as light. The face invites, 
lures, bewitches yon. It is gone, but it offers you 
soul-companionship. You follow it. The sweetest 
affinities are stirred within you. Lest some forbid- 
ding countenance break the spell, you come in off 
the street to think a while. 

You meditate upon all you have seen. Where 
do all these faces come from — the gentle, the lov- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 251 



ing, the boorish, the crude, the cultured, the pol- 
ished, the shadowy, the gloomy, the sycophantish, 
the hypocritical, the demoniacal, the ghoulish, the 
saintly, the Godlike, the amiable, the divine, — 
where do they all come from 1 You have seen them 
all ; where do they come from f 

Take your stand on the street-corner to-morrow, 
and this time ask the souls as they pass by ; they 
can tell you. 



"Expression 
is of more 
consequence 
than shape." 

Sir 

Charles Bell 



CHAPTER XXXI 

The Skeletons 
at Our Feasts 



CHAPTEE XXXI 



THE SKELETONS AT OUR FEASTS 



No human being can be beautiful if he bears the 
burden of late hours and fancy spreads. Nature 
pays her rewards with uncompromising fidelity, 
but she exacts the penalties of broken law without 
respect to person or position. Her table is the 
Bound Table — there are no special seats of honor 
for her guests. If her tribunals inflict punishment, 
they always indicate the character of the violation. 

A sunken chest does not always mean consump- 
tion. It often stands for mental obtuseness or 
moral obliquity. A worn countenance does not 
always reveal physical depletion only. It not in- 
frequently tells the tale of misguided intellect and 
devastated spiritual estates. We need to stop and 
breathe a while. It is said that drafts are dan- 
gerous, whether of air, of liquids, or upon your 
bank account. There is less danger in a breeze 
than in atmospheric stagnation. We ought not to 
starve for oxygen while dwelling in its opulence. 
Pure water is the most sanative rinsing agent, in- 
ternal and external. A bath is the best remedy 
for the blues. In drawing a check on a money 
deposit, one ought not to spend his soul. 

We need to give the diaphragm a chance. No 
man ever breathed himself to death. Sleeping 
apartments should have at least a thousand cubic 
feet of pure air to begin the night with, and in 
addition to this there should be an inflow of twenty 
255 



"As the 
body as- 
sumes mean 
and grovel- 
ing attitudes 
or majestic 
and beau- 
tiful ones, so 
will the 
mind be 
influenced." 

Mrs. £. N. 

Poulson 



256 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



" Pantomim- 
ic expression 
is a physical 
manifesta- 
tion of the 
activities of 
the soul." 
Frank 
Stuart 
Parker 



cubic feet per minute. Deep, natural breathing 
should become, not a mere habit or practise, but a 
fixed order of being. 

In claiming the power of spirit to create beauty, 
it would be unwise and irrational to undervalue 
the worth of oxygen. One could not be beau- 
tiful very long if the process of respiration should 
be suspended. Spirit can not make oxygen, per- 
haps, but it can use it unerringly. The physical 
means of life can not be omitted. But we must 
beware of charging the lungs with foul air and 
poisonous gases. Deep, rhythmical breathing in 
an ocean of fresh atmospheric vitality is a sover- 
eign remedy for many ills ascribed to foreign 
causes, but found in our minds and bodies every- 
where. Whatever robs the body of this exhilarat- 
ing draft, whether it be unwholesome gases, mus- 
cular insufficiency, tight clothing, or other inquisi- 
torial torture, will sap the physique of its tonicity 
and the face of its charm. Whoever dissipates all 
night can not sleep on a saffron bed next day. Peo- 
ple sometimes wake up, as Byron did, to find them- 
selves famous, but they are not apt to if they sleep 
late. 

And yet the physical ruin wrought in dissipa- 
tion of every name and order is only the external 
and visible evidence of the more appalling wreckage 
within where the moral odors inhaled are saturated 
with putrescence and laden with death. There 
is a respiration in which the blood can not be oxy- 
genized and where impurities can not be expelled ; 
where every inhalation is a draft of spiritual 
corruption. The body must bear testimony to the 
unsanitary pollution in the solitudes of the soul. 

A beautiful face can not stand arrayed as a show- 
window for a shoddy stock of commodities on shelf 



BUILDEBS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 257 



and counter within. We need to pause and give 
Nature a chance to catch up in the wild race we 
are running. Everywhere Atalanta is flying toward 
the goal, yet ever and anon stooping for the golden 
apples of Hippomenes and losing the prize of life. 
We destroy ourselves struggling after false beauty 
when all our being is full of the true. We exhaust 
ourselves in the craze after effect. Swollen with 
pride and bent on mere pleasure, we walk the earth 
and forget that there is anything else upon which 
to stand. Satisfied with the support given us by 
the ground we tread, we lose sight of the Eock of 
Ages. 

We strain after grace till we grow awkward in 
the effort. We deal with externals till we almost 
forget the thinking principle with which we con- 
sider them. Yv T e rush about over the earth seeking 
pleasure, when if we would only stand still happi- 
ness would overtake us. We strive after the fine 
and the refined till, like Carlo Dolci's paintings, we 
have the soul and the character polished out of us 
— polished with neither sense nor spirit to sustain 
the soul's work of art, and with no real loveliness 
to represent it. 

More's Utopia is in the wrong place. Every 
word locating it refers to Nowhere. It ought to 
have "a local habitation and a name. " It ought 
to be wherever there are human hearts in human 
bodies, and it should make life splendid with the 
graces of primal being. Emerson's " saccharine 
principle of life," sweetness of spirit, can "make a 
heaven of hell. " Contentment is the injunction of 
every law of nature to the restlessness of the age. 

Eead Palingenesis. The wanderer had sought 
happiness in almost every land and every court. 
He came in out of the world unto himself at last to 
17 



" Turning 
attention 
from arts 
and sciences 
to mankind 
would make 
man health- 
ier, purer, 
and 
stronger." 

Tyndall 






m 



' ' Grace 
belongs to 
no period of 
life, but to 
all periods, 
and good- 
ness 

improves it 
as long as it 
exists." 

Dr Alexander 

Smith 



258 BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 

find that he had carried peace with him beyond the 
Alps and along the Danube. Eead Kathrina. The 
disgruntled heart had searched the world for Para- 
dise when Eden all the while was rosy-red in its 
own auricles and ventricles. Eead Easselas. Dis- 
contented in the Happy Valley, the hero entered a 
crusade for the Holy Land that held his hopes of 
joy. He found it not in Cairo, nor along the Mle. 
In oratory, in money, in pastoral life, in royalty, in 
solitude, in worldly greatness, in marriage, in con- 
verse with the aged, in friendship, in all the cate- 
gory he searched, but in none of these did he re- 
cover the prize he sought. He had carried it with 
him in his own soul. The world is searching where 
nothing is lost. The strenuous life blinds us so 
that we can not see the glory inherent in our own 
attributes. 

The Egyptians at their banquets always exhibited 
a skeleton to remind their guests of the brevity of 
human life. It was the doctrine of present sensual 
delights and future oblivion. For while they were 
wise, very wise — the philosophers of the ancient 
world — they never rose to the idea that mind and 
body are not all. They never grasped the con- 
ception that mere intellectual culture may go on 
and on, overshadowing and encompassing all else, 
till not a ray of soul -light can pierce the conscious 
life. There are other skeletons at our feasts grin- 
ning in vice and dancing in bacchanals ; other liv- 
ing cadavers gloating over the decadence of the 
holiest things of being, leaving faces livid and 
blase with surfeit of false pleasure. 

"The mind is the natural protector of the body." 
Imbecility does not protect itself. And yet in 
many ways we act the role of imbeciles — desirous 
of beauty, but reversing all of Nature's laws to 



BUILBFBS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 259 



secure it. Mght is converted into day, day into 
night. Every hygienic principle is abandoned and 
every artificiality is offered as a substitute. Self- 
preservation, the strongest instinct in Nature, is 
thwarted in all manner of extravagance, mental 
and physical. 

We can not wait the slow progress of spiritual de- 
velopment. Everything must go off like a parlor- 
match. We are not satisfied with mere seasoning ; 
we want to eat the pepper itself. We do not relish 
simple flavoring; we want to drink the vanilla 
straight. We are not willing to trust to natural 
appetite; we must conjure up one with sauces and 
spices, chili and acids. We eat sweetmeats till we 
must have pickles to rest the palling taste. "All 
extremes tend to react to the opposite. " Concen- 
tration, explosion; strain, exhaustion. 

The table of Apelles was pictured all around 
with studies in object-lesson, one side filled with 
representations of temperance, the other of intem- 
perance. We cover these suggestive pictures with 
fancy dishes — and forget their lessons — with fried 
headache, pastried indigestion, boiling emotions, 
frozen sensibilities, fricasseed nightmare, mayon- 
naised palpitation, garnished colic, stuffed dreams, 
lard-soaked cholera morbus, a general salmagun- 
died potpourri of destruction — and when surfeited 
on any one of these we rest the sense by feeding it 
on some other, and then wonder that we have gas- 
tronomic disorders and the complexion of the 
pumpkin. 

Floating down the ages is the old tradition that 
when Noah planted his first vine he buried at its 
root a lamb, a lion, and a hog. The lamb suggests 
modesty with wine ; the lion, the boldness begotten 
by its liberal use ; the hog, the debauchery of ex- 



" Be thou 
but self- 
possessed ; 
thou hast 
the art of 
living." 

Goethe 



nr 



"Who shall 
change our 
vile body 
that it may- 
be fashioned 
like unto His 
glorious 
body." 

Paul 



260 BUILDEBS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 

cess. The parable is symbolic of the social behav- 
ior of the age. 

The Greeks of old drank from cups of amethyst 
to deprive their wine of its intoxicating qualities. 
But a debauched and unholy touch has robbed the 
stone of its spell. We break the cup and drink 
from vessels unclean. We lose ourselves in dissi- 
pations and frivolities, carnivals and revels, shat- 
tering the chalices that were designed to serve the 
soul. Life is spent in effigy and nobody cries 
" counterfeit I" or rebukes the counterfeiter. The 
pleasure of eating and drinking is a good thing only 
when it serves both soul and body. Mere pleasur- 
able and sensuous delights are only intoxicants. 
They are healthful enough indulged in temperately, 
but if too freely they throw the soul out of poise. 

It is only when we coach our beautiful impulses 
that we get real nerve-tonics, the food of fine liv- 
ing, the clear profit of being. Appetites and physi- 
cal pleasures can not be in mastery without a deca- 
dence of both soul and body. Nature will not have 
it so without revolution. A few years ago when 
the millions were starving in India, millions more 
were eating themselves to death in America. No 
wonder dyspepsia, with its haggard look, is called 
Americanitis. Men seldom go deeper into life than 
the stomach. One can not be beautiful so long as 
he impersonates Sancho Panza, the sacred paunch. 

Our social life has upset the order of Nature and 
substituted an artificial regime in its stead. Man 
is essentially a social being. The hermit never 
develops. Human isolation is the barrenness of 
Gibraltar without its strength. Enoch Arden under 
the palms forgot the language with which he courted 
Annie Lee, and the once vigorous vernacular of the 
sailor came to resemble the gibberish of the chim- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 261 



panzee. His face was weather-beaten from the 
storms within and without. The Siberian exile, 
freezing in body, freezes in spirit also. Napoleon 
on St. Helena lost something of the emperor's look. 
The solitary Eobinson Crusoe drew in the horizon 
and lowered the sky of his life to conform to the 
limitations of his lonely island. 

The child brought up alone never reaches the 
once possible stature of manhood internally or ex- 
ternally. Like the caged bird, his song may be 
sweeter, but his music will be on a narrow staff and 
in a minor key. The drawn faces of the little ones 
old before their time tell the story of social starva- 
tion. 

And yet, notwithstanding the dwarfing conse- 
quences of isolation, the worst havoc to the human 
soul and the human face does not come of solitude. 
It is wrought in the midst of the throng where 
voices are gay and feet go tripping to sensuous 
music, where the body is arrayed in gorgeous ap- 
parel while the spirit wears mourning within. It 
is here where the masks are worn and the hollow 
forms of society swallow up the personality, where 
sham and shambling are the garb and gait of be- 
ing, where social flippancy dominates every sense, 
where all the finer affinities cry aloud and in vain 
for companionship ; it is here where the real man, 
walking side by side with the made-up man, feels 
the desolation realized by the Ancient Mariner 
when he cried: "Water, water everywhere, nor 
any a drop to drink. " It is here that reckless so- 
cial customs desecrate the human face. " Folly 
wears her shoes out, she dances so fast. " 

Undine came into the world without a soul. 
She must have been born in the midst of certain 
modern social functions. The finer the society the 



"Self- 
culture 
aims at 
perfection, 
and is the 
highest 
fulfilment 
of God's 
law." 

Goethe 



262 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



" The pos- 
sibilities of 
good are 
greater than 
the possi- 
bilities of 
evil." 

Helen Keller 



more naked it is. The more it exhibits of body the 
less there is of soul to be exhibited. This is the his- 
tory of the savage and the cannibal. It is equally 
true of the Algonquins of civilization. 

Our pianos sometimes have finer polish than our 
music. Our horses sometimes have better training 
than our children. Social regalia is sometimes 
finer than social character. Men and women starv- 
ing for oxygen in the Torricellian vacuum of con- 
ventionality ! Men and women lost in the dead 
forms of things — floating with the driftwood of 
life ! Spirit parading in effigy. Parrots speaking 
where angels were endowed! Dummies standing 
where heroes were planned ! The divine attributes 
swirling in the saturnalia of the senses ! Immortal 
energies, instead of being clothed upon with holy 
raiment, instead of filling and thrilling the sen- 
sorium with the glories of spiritual faculties and 
supersensible agencies, robe the physical in purple 
and fine linen and feast it upon counterfeit manna, 
while mind and soul are roaming the commons in 
hunger and in rags ! 



CHAPTER XXXII 

Soul Plastiques in 
Speech; Facing 
Toward Eden 



CHAPTEE XXXII 

SOUL-PLASTIQUES IN SPEECH; FACING TOWARD 
EDEN 



Speech has a strong reflexive action on the coun- 
tenance. Born of the soul, all articulate forms 
echo back into the ears of spirit, and reenforce the 
impulses that give them birth. 

Archbishop Trench declares that impoverish- 
ment and debasement of language go with impov- 
erishment and debasement of personal and national 
life. "Has man fallen? We need no more than 
his language to prove it. Like everything else 
about him, it bears at once the stamp of his great- 
ness or his degradation, of his glory or his shame ; 
for the existence of the word bears testimony to the 
existence of the thing." 

The deplorable feature of our lexicons is that 
they contain far more words for expressing pas- 
sional states than affectional qualities. Human in- 
telligence has coined these words out of the human 
heart. They are forms of soul -life in sound. They 
show the versatility of spirit in manifesting itself 
in the material world. 

A nation of loose speech is a nation of loose 
morals. A nation of elegant diction is a nation of 
elegant manners and charming personalities. Cer- 
tain Brazilian tribes have no word for " thanks"; 
neither do they show gratitude or culture beyond 
the coarsest conceptions. The Mechuanas of Africa 
once had a word for deity. They degenerated from 
265 



" Knowl- 
edge of more 
value may 
be in the 
history of a 
word than 
in the his- 
tory of a 
campaign." 
Coleridge 



266 BUILDERS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 



"You can 
not impart 
to any man 
more than 
his vocabu- 
lary con- 
tains intel- 
ligibly to 
him." 

Trench 



an already low religious life till the term actually 
disappeared. Moffat tells us that their physical 
expression underwent a change corresponding to 
their moral retrogression, and this is corroborated 
by De Laage. 

A very small word and the manner of speaking 
it may often be used as a key to a man's whole 
character. One can not keep his language out of 
his life nor his life out of his language. Words are 
things — living things. They are moving, breath- 
ing, animated impersonations of spirit-shapes that 
can not die. Not only does shoddy language drag 
the speaker down, but there is nothing that so 
holds him down. 

Generally speaking, a man's vocabulary is a fair 
measure of his mental scope. Invariably it is a 
true guide to his moral status. " Out of the ful- 
ness of the heart the mouth speaketh. " Thoughts 
naturally and irresistibly seek out word- settings. 
Any truth or conviction that bears upon the mind 
sufficiently to become a decided element in making 
character in the face is restless and impatient till it 
finds itself embodied in language. It may not re- 
ceive vocal utterance, but in the processes of think- 
ing the verbal images marshal through conscious- 
ness. And if images come that can not be symboled 
with the tongue, they assume some other concrete 
form in the mind, and always accentuate the facial 
expression produced by the thought. 

Flippant speech and insipid looks go together. 
They are companionable interpretations of the inner 
life through sound and form. All the inflections 
and modulations are but specialized efforts to bring 
the soul into material recognition. Articulate 
speech is the language of the intellect. Inflection 
is the language of the sensibilities. The act of lo- 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 267 



cution is the exercise of psychic energies through 
the organic life. This exercise strengthens and 
reenforces the qualities of soul in action. This 
strength added unto strength makes character with- 
in and expression without to correspond. 

Slang is the sure sign of linguistic poverty. It 
may enlarge the future dictionary in the unabridged 
edition, but any lexicon thus builded might be all 
the better for liberal expurgation. If slang ever 
adds strength to expression, it does so at the ex- 
pense of a certain elegance that always stands for 
more than strength. It can never hope to supply 
richness of thought or purity of diction. All cant 
and macaronic jumble evidence the mental, moral, 
and physical trend toward inelegance. The indul- 
gence so common in this melange can not fail to im- 
print upon the features the colloquial expression. 

One's language is himself in vocality, in articu- 
late form. Speech is a divine gift. The creation 
of a language commensurate with the dignities of 
life is the work of the loftiest faculties of the soul. 
It ought not to be turned over to the barbarians 
who come to destroy. If the best writers are chary 
of coining a new word, surely the novice has no 
business in the mint. If angels dare not tread the 
holy ground, vandals ought to be legislated out of 
the field. 

The average vocabulary will probably not reach 
a thousand words. If we need more, there are 
three hundred thousand from which to choose. 
New forms must have some excuse for existence. 
If the excuse be for science or art, industry or re- 
ligion, the credentials are sufficient. But where 
they are to serve the loud laugh that speaks the 
vacant mind, they should be still-born. 

No man's face will show great culture if his vo- 



" The most 
precious 
relish in 
conversation 
is the play 
of spirit 
in the 
features." 

Rev. /?. W. 

Alger 



268 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



" There is 
an inward as 
well as 
outward 
expression, 
and the 
former 
determines 
the latter .» 
Dr. A. A, 
Lipscomb 



cabulary is very limited. Mere words do not make 
culture, to be sure, but the thoughts and emotions 
from which they spring, playing from the centers 
upon the exterior, have a wonderful power in draw- 
ing the features into harmony. The gossip's face, 
invariably empty like his head and perverse like 
his heart, is constantly fed by a pauper's ragout of 
words hashed up in the same manner, in the same 
spirit, on every occasion. The heart has gone into 
the head, the head has gone to waste, and the waste 
has gone into the countenance. True human speech 
is the bearer of many dignities. The patois of the 
slang-maker is linguistic treason. Looseness of 
speech is the natural outgrowth of looseness of 
character as well as of demoralized mental habits. 
Its visible forms are monuments of audible shapes. 

Self- culture must have aims beyond itself. 
Otherwise it draws all things selfward and gives 
out nothing that comes. True culture must have 
about it a strong centrifugal force to balance the 
centripetal gravitations in the perfect orbit of life. 
"The soul in its highest moods translates itself by 
poising the agents of expression." We need not 
fear that elegance means lack of power. Grace is 
not the refinement of weakness, but of iron into 
steel. 

" Ease is force, " says Herbert Spencer. Constant 
tension of nerve and muscle tends to rigidity and 
angularity. We are unceasingly impelling the 
being out of poise. We strive to move everywhere 
by the straight line that is the shortest distance be- 
tween two points. It is an effort to save time on 
the idea that life is too short to go the long way. 

Our faces grow careworn in the strenuous rush 
to get through the world. We have no time to fol- 
low the meanderings of the stream of existence ; no 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 269 



time to linger and catch its song ; no time to watch 
the sunbeams kiss its ripples or to drink in its 
waters, though they flow from the hills of God. 

" Straight lines tire the eye ; curved lines rest it." 
Straight lines of body or motion are chiefly vital, 
animal, plebeian. Curved lines of body or mo- 
tion are chiefly spiritual. Crystals are beautiful, 
but they suggest stiffness, fixedness, insensibility. 
They are attractive as the facets of a diamond are 
attractive, but they would not be beautiful in the 
human face. Soul-plastiques are found in psychic 
creations — in word and movement, form and ex- 
pression. 

"Beauty, whether of animals or plants, men or 
women, is the external sign of goodness of organi- 
zation and integrity of function." The soul has 
the highest functions. A French writer says that 
all religions are simply progressive developments 
of beauty, since genuine worship brings man into 
nearer likeness of God, and therefore makes him 
more beautiful. "The thought that is most put 
out brings its corresponding visible elements to 
crystallize about you as surely as the visible bit of 
copper in the solution attracts the invisible bit of 
copper in the solution. " 

" A mind always hopeful, courageous, determined 
on its purpose and keeping itself to that, attracts 
to itself out of the elements the things and pow- 
ers favorable to that purpose." "In the degree to 
which we come into realization of the higher powers 
of mind and spirit will the body become less gross 
and heavy, and the finer the texture and form. " 

Peace of mind is absolutely essential to a grand 
face. Eepose is the sign of power, whether in ac- 
tion or rest. It can not be found outside of spiri- 
tual adjustment. We often fret ourselves into per- 



4 'Stillness 
of person 
and steadi- 
ness of 
feature are 
marks of 
good 

breeding." 
Oliver 
Wendell 
Holmes 



270 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



" Beauty 

is to be used 

to stimulate 

human 

courage, to 

embellish 

human 

spirit, and 

to enlarge 

human 

thought." 
Leander Ed- 
mund Whipple 



turbation of mind and inharmony of body over 
the most superficial and paltry nothingness. We 
often throw away our finest impulses like children 
grown weary of their toys. We suffer ourselves to 
be buffeted by the waves, and our faces grow pale 
and our eyes transfixed with fright at the white- 
capped billows that toss our little bark from 
crest to trough. We need only to cast anchor in 
the deep sea where there is eternal calm ; so may 
our troubled lids be rocked to sleep by these same 
billows: 

Roll, ye waves, mountain-high! 

Dash your foam to the sky ! 
There is calm in the heart of the sea! 

And I wait through the storm 

For that Glorified Form 
That will walk on the waters to me 

To-morrow ! 



"What one lives in the invisible thought- world, 
he is constantly actualizing in the visible material 
world." We are prone to forget this great law 
when we drift into wickedness and passion. Bad 
morals make bad flesh, and when you put the two 
together the devil's to pay; for, if we are to trust 
the testimony of the senses, there are demons in 
people to-day like those the Master cast out of the 
man who dwelt among the tombs — spirits that make 
frightful the faces of those obsessed. 

Humanity shrinks from the idea of perfection as 
if it were a nightmare. Surely it is better to give 
wings to the soul than to cage it within physical 
limitations. Marching toward perfections impos- 
sible of attainment is better than walking toward a 
degradation of sure attainment. It is something to 
the Alpine flower-hunter to get near enough to the 
mountain lily to look squarely into its cup and gaze 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 271 



upon its pearly whiteness even though it grow just 
beyond his reach. Better face toward Eden any 
day than toward purgatory. You at least get a 
better view, and if you move you move in a better 
direction. 

We need not fear that perfection may mean stag- 
nation or even quiescence. Any attainment or ac- 
quirement, tho perfect in itself, only fits for a 
higher one. " Take an esthetic attitude, and you 
have for the moment an eternal idea ; that is, you 
picture an absolute standard of your inner idea. " 
According to the conception projecting it, this at- 
titude is complete, representing a perfect spiritual 
photograph ; but it can not satisfy a larger and a 
more refined idea. The "tune " that pleases to-day 
is stale to-morrow. As capacity widens and as the 
soul expands to meet the processes of growth, all 
of life broadens under more complicated harmonies, 
calling for more complex musical compositions, 
and classical productions are enjoyed. As the 
psychic powers grow through exercise, the soul is 
qualified to receive greater illumination and to be- 
come en rapport with the higher and subtler forces 
of divine life. 

There is an uncommunicable and illusive excel- 
lence that haunts every beautiful thing. It is be- 
cause ugliness is falsehood and beauty is truth. 
"What any man sees and enjoys of pure beauty is a 
conception according to his capacity, and according 
to this same capacity for seeing and enjoying ideal 
beauty does his countenance grow toward facial 
ideality. No man whose ideals are sunk into volup- 
tuousness or carried away into sybaritism can be 
beautiful or conceive of beauty with any commen- 
surate understanding, any more than he can repre- 
sent it in form and feature. 



"The body 

is but the 

clothing of 

the soul ; 

when it 

moves 

gracefully, 

the soul 

expresses 

itself with 

perfect 

freedom." 

Emily 
Bishop 



272 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"God's face 
shines ever 
upon the 
dwellers in 
the Temple 
Beautiful." 
Swedenborg 



Genuine beauty never comes out on parade. It 
will not suffer the blare of trumpets or the beating 
of drums. It moves with stately rhythm, but never 
with noisy tread. It "muffles its music as it 
comes. " It is a modest maiden shrinking from the 
approach of all that would contaminate. It evades 
the companionship of those who would abase it. 
It must be courted with a pure heart. It stoops to 
meet the kisses of chaste lips. It will not permit 
itself to have fellowship with vice in any form. It 
demands white livery of all who come. It toasts 
the health of every worthy guest, but it drinks from 
the fine glass cups of the Middle Ages that crack 
and shatter whenever poison touches them. 

The sagas of Sweden tell us of a mysterious island 
in the Baltic Sea that vanishes as you approach it. 
It fitly symbolizes the transcendent glories that 
seem to retreat from us when we advance upon 
them. Our ideals are ever receding from our quest, 
and if, perchance, we lay our hands upon one of 
them, another and a higher forthwith appears smil- 
ing, inviting, beckoning. Clear and looming in the 
distance, they sometimes become mysteriously illu- 
sive when, with unprepared or unholy hands, we 
would seize upon them. As the island vanishes 
into the shores of the main continent, so our ideals 
into the shores of divine perfection. We shall 
reach them after a while. "Veil after veil will be 
lifted, but there must be veil after veil beyond. " 



CHAPTER XXXIII 
The Face of 
Christ for Artist 
and Worshipper 



CHAPTER XXXIII 



THE FACE OF CHRIST FOE, ARTIST AND 
WORSHIPER 

If man had but a single faculty, he would have 
but one kind of building energy. Of necessity he 
would have a monoplastic face ; eyes, mouth, nose, 
cheeks, brows, all constructed in monotony. Infi- 
nite wisdom is nowhere more apparent than in the 
gift of many faculties. "When omniscience was 
denied us, we were endowed with versatility. The 
picturesqueness of human thought may console us 
for our imperfections." For in this versatility we 
have the widest variety of constructive forces. In 
this variety of building energies lie the possibili- 
ties of the most complex expressions, and in the 
greatest complexity of expression the greatest 
beauty. 

Ennui can not rest upon a face woven together 
by so many fine threads of thought and emotion. 
Furthermore, Nature is charitable in compensating 
blemishes with excellences. " A beautiful voice 
may sometimes redeem a vulgar song. " So may a 
lovely spirit relieve a rugged countenance. In the 
ruins of life are buried many treasures underneath 
the debris and wreckage of lovely things. The 
soul, like an expert archeologist, is constantly 
unearthing the divine attributes entombed in the 
flesh. In the processes of culture these are then 
placed in the structure, and the soul's Alhambra 
takes on something of its original splendor. 
275 



"Beauty, 
the sign of 
health, has 
no fellow- 
ship with 
disease." 
D. H. Jacques 



276 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"^heonly 
man who 
has the 
right to 
smile is the 
man through 
whose face 
beams the 
smile of 
Jesus." 

J, T. Jacob 



The inner activities of the savage's life lead him 
to express a low order of beauty. Color is first 
with untutored minds — extravagant color. "The 
Indian paints long before he designs. The wig- 
wam is hung with trophies long before he finds 
pleasure in its shape. " He decorates his body with 
exaggerated colors, beads, and feathers, while his 
home is the bed of grass he slept upon last night, 
covered with a rudely constructed canopy of skins. 
Quicken his tastes and at once he begins to beautify 
his home, to lengthen his stay in one place, and to 
modify the vulgar pigments with which he has be- 
dizened his body. His eye loses something of its 
fierceness, while his movements and his manner- 
isms begin to resemble those of civilized life. 

Mantegazza names two elements of beauty : Ami- 
ability and sincerity. Whether these are all-em- 
bracing or not, the face that bears these qualities is 
beautiful. Not only so, but they are always sug- 
gested by loveliness of countenance. 

One grows like the things he thinks on. It would 
be well for every individual to keep the picture of 
Jesus where he could look at it often. The great 
artists, divining science by intuition, have taken 
the face of the Christ as a model. Why ? Because 
of His historical importance? The profane histo- 
rians of His time ignore Him, and even Josephus, if 
the reference to Jesus in his histories is not, indeed, 
an interpolation, has written but a scant paragraph 
about Him. Every tyrant in the annals of the 
world, every usurper, every butcher, have been 
more prominent politically, socially, and finan- 
cially. Why not Nero, Dionysius, or Ivan the 
Terrible as a model? The answer is easy. They 
had not the virtues that make model countenances. 

Love is the soul's cosmetic. "It transfigures 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 211 



every form in which it is truly incarnate. " It was 
not the historical or other prominence of the Mas- 
ter that caused the painters to choose the face of 
Jesus as a pattern for their finest portrait work. 
It was because of the innate and intuitive convic- 
tion that " spirit creates form " ; it was because of 
the consciousness made sure by the spiritual facul- 
ties that the Nazarene was endowed with the divin- 
est attributes in the divinest perfection, and that 
these soul-forces must build and animate the one 
matchless face of the ages. 

And where is the artist that has painted Him 
ugly 1 Where is the brush that would dare to draw 
across His features one uncomely stroke I Where 
is the mental or moral discernment that has pic- 
tured His face as repulsive or forbidding? Who 
has ever found in the Folice Gazette or in the 
rogues' gallery the likeness of a man conforming 
to any possible mental image of the Master? 
Where is the sentient being that does not associ- 
ate the Galilean's features with qualities of perfec- 
tion, and these qualities again with a divinely 
beautiful countenance % 

As Christ's face was a model face, so was His 
inner life a model inner life. The existence of the 
one is a corollary to the existence of the other. 
The teachings of the Christ are full of insistence 
upon harmony with law, and the consequent and 
inevitable harmony of body that must follow. It 
was not an empty doctrine. His own life is the 
illustrative climax of this philosophy — the perfect 
union of a perfect spirit with a perfect body. And 
after the Sanhedrin had passed its judgments, after 
the cruelty and hate of men had spent their force, 
after nail and hammer, spear and wormwood, had 
accomplished their work, after the persecution of 



"Be ye 
perfect, even 
as your 
Father 
which is in 
heaven is 
perfect." 

Jesus 



278 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Character 
builds an 
existence 
out of cir- 
cumstance ; 
from the 
same mate- 
rials one 
man builds 
palaces, 
another, 
hovels." 
0. H. Lewes 



his foes had ceased and the prophecies had been 
fulfilled, the millions still delighted to gaze upon 
that countenance. Philosopher and sage, priest 
and poet, youth and age, still gather upon the 
slopes of Olivet to meditate upon that face. It is 
but the universal affinities of spirit seeking their 
own and finding it in the Christ. 

Thirty years ago, in the little Bavarian village of 
Oberammergau, an untutored wood- carver sat for a 
picture at the photographer's. When the daguer- 
reotype was finished and placed on exhibition, it 
bore the marks of rusticity — plain, simple, unso- 
phisticated. There was nothing whatever in the 
expression to attract attention or provoke comment. 
In 1902 the same man sat for another picture in the 
same little village. The most casual observer is 
impressed with the photograph as a striking like- 
ness of the Christ. 

The history of the case is well known. When 
the townf oik determined to commemorate the good- 
ness of God in averting the plague, by giving the 
Passion-Play every ten years in the village, they 
chose this wood- carver to represent the character 
of our Lord. Thirty years of study upon the ideal 
life, thirty years spent in appropriating the char- 
acteristics of His matchless personality, thirty years 
of absorbing the principles enunciated by the Mas- 
ter, thirty years of actual impersonation of the hu- 
manly conceived attributes of the lowly Nazarene, 
thirty years of assimilating the Christ-life, and of 
regulating and harmonizing all His being by it, 
molded body and face into a near resemblance of 
Him who was perfectly beautiful. Surely our souls 
must answer for our bodies. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

The Art Gallery 
of the Race 



CHAPTEE XXXIV 



THE ART GALLERY OF THE RACE 



Love and hate are universal expressions. In all 
races they are practically the same. It is a world- 
wide demonstration that similar psychic conditions 
create similar external forms. Darwin declares 
that in love and hate men and beasts have strik- 
ingly similar expressions. He shows that in love, 
both strive to look as pleasing as possible, and 
that in hate both endeavor to look as repulsive and 
even as hideous as possible. 

Study the races. There is a psychical as well as 
a physiological reason for the oblique eye of the 
Mongolian, the promontory features of the Indian, 
the bronzed look of the Malay, the black pigment 
of the African's skin, the fair complexion of the 
Caucasian. There are soul-reasons for every pecu- 
liarity of lip and cheek and eye in all of them. 

Eef erring again to various peoples, the face of 
the Egyptian is plain, crafty, avaricious, anacreon- 
tic, like his life ; that of the Thracian, cold, cruel, 
hard, like his sensibilities ; that of the Frenchman, 
sparkling, vivacious, shrewd, like his mental habits ; 
that of the transalpine Gaul, mulish, haughty, vin- 
dictive, like his traditional traits of character ; that 
of the Patagonian, phlegmatic, soulless, drowsy, 
like his slumberings ; that of the Samoan, or Sand- 
wich Islander, stupid, dreamy, nonchalant, like his 
ideal that sleep is the blessed state; that of the 
Portuguese, flat, impassive, apathetic, like his per- 
281 



"A photo- 
graph of a 
natural 
object is not 
art; it 
requires an 
idealization 
of nature." 
Charles 
Dudley 
Warner 



282 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



' ' Greece 
deposited 
her riches in 
the spirits of 
her great 
men, and 
they are 
forever 
secure." 
Rev. J. W. Lee 



sonality ; while that of the Jew under strong racial 
traditions, convictions and religion, has remained 
the same through all the ages. 

Without exception the savage nose is depressed, 
thick-set, broad-based; his eyes are dull, frigid, 
spiritless; his face has its greatest dimensions in 
the widths, with the animal predominating; his 
skin is coarse, sandpapery, inelastic; his jaws are 
gross and dense for fighting, while his cheek-bones 
are prominent for defense ; his muscles are coarse- 
grained and of poor quality ; his movements are 
boorish, graceless, his whole being lost in the ani- 
mal propensities. 

Without exception the cultivated nations raise 
the forehead, refine the brow, arch the lines of the 
mouth more delicately, diminish the huge propor- 
tions of the jaw, remove the coarseness from the 
nose, bring a lustrous look into the eye, give the 
skin a velvety smoothness, lose the prominence of 
the cheek-bones, weave the muscles into better tex- 
ture, give locomotion a rhythm of movement, the 
entire bodily expression bespeaking the culture of 
the mind. 

This testimony is borne out by all observation, 
by all experience, and by all history. The highest 
beauty, especially in women, is found only in cul- 
tivated nations. Doubtless the savage state has 
many valuable lessons for the civilized peoples, 
but, notwithstanding the multitude of violations of 
Nature's laws by cultured races, they are still far 
more beautiful than their barbarous brothers. 
The savage may be muscular in build, lithe, erect, 
and even symmetrical, but he is always lacking in 
spiritual manifestations and in the details of ele- 
gant expression. 

A study of the creations of men will show that 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 283 



they are monuments of soul qualities. Contrast the 
primitive edifices of any people with the architec- 
ture of civilized periods of the same national life. 
Everywhere are the proofs that man stamps his 
inner being upon all his handiwork. And it is 
educating, refining to soul and body, to meditate 
upon the mysterious operations of mind and soul 
forging their way into dead forms of matter, and 
leaving their dreams upon their material achieve- 
ments. Nothing in the history of the world has 
done more to lift the whole race to a higher plane 
of civilization than the World's Fair and similar 
exhibitions where the nations gather to contemplate 
the material evidences of their growth. It is profit- 
able because the character, the genius, the skill of 
peoples is in their architecture, inventions, machin- 
ery, vehicles, manufactures, literature, sculpture, 
music, oratory, worship. 

" To look upon noble forms makes noble through 
the sensuous organism that which is higher." The 
proper analysis of a statue brings to your mind the 
ideal of the master. Facial enlightenment is the 
sure result. The knowledge of how to judge a pic- 
ture and the act of judging create in the analyst's 
mind the approximate ideality of the artist. The 
mental conception thus thrust into consciousness 
lifts the features toward the beautiful in propor- 
tion to the clearness of the image and the pleasure 
it gives the beholder. An art gallery would be a 
splendid nursery for children — surely better than 
the basement or the garret ; surely better than the 
commons or the street. It would serve to show 
them through suggestion what an art studio is all 
the world. It would help, through the awakening 
of the culture sense, to make of them finer speci- 
mens of nature for the wide art gallery of the race. 



"The soul 
that can 
render an 
honest and 
a perfect 
man com- 
mands all 
light, all 
influence, 
all fate." 
Beaumont 
and Fletcher 



284 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



( ' Our capac- 
ity for be- 
ing affected 
by harmony 
implies the 
ability to 
reach our 
ideals 
through 
harmony." 

Herbert 
Spencer 



" Forms habitually contemplated tend to repeat 
themselves in body and face." The automatic 
power of the nervous system to reproduce the im- 
ages and activities once given is one of the eco- 
nomic values of nature ; but it works ruin if white 
and gray matter are viciously impressed. 

A conservatory would also be a profitable place 
for study — not for melody or discord, but for the 
things they symbolize. Music is said to be the 
highest and purest expression of the soul. It is a 
universal language. "All nations understand my 
speech, " said one of the piano masters. Music that 
satisfies the soul attunes the nerves to harmony, and 
these nerves under such conditions bring culture to 
the muscles and refinement to the face. ^ Harmony, 
proportion, relation, concord of sounds, tones, 
overtones, all holding their individuality yet each 
blending with every other in countless varieties of 
pitch, rate, quantity, quality — laughing, sobbing, 
loving, hoping, dreaming, dancing, sighing, frolick- 
ing, worshiping — they are all there, the keyboard 
holding the epitome of life, and giving out refining 
influences to all who listen rightly. 

"Music, more than any other art," says Cousin, 
"awakens the sentiment of the infinite because it is 
vague, obscure, indeterminate in its effects — the 
opposite of sculpture, which is fixed." Painting 
occupies a middle ground between them. "Music 
is not made to express complicated and factitious 
sentiment, nor terrestrial and vulgar ; its peculiar 
charm is to elevate the soul toward the infinite. " 
Through music the capacity for refinement may be 
rapidly and largely increased. But it must be har- 
mony. Nothing can be more demoralizing to deli- 
cacy of sense than the mere banging of chords and 
the butchery of fine compositions. All execution, 






BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 285 



whether simple or complex, if filled with soul and 
sustained by rational technique, has its message of 
culture for all who hear. 

Culture through the senses must find its highest 
product by means of ear and eye, the two most deli- 
cate and refined physical avenues of impression. 
The eye may compass more, but the ear measures 
more accurately in detail, and many a foible in art 
may escape the one while the other scrutinizes with 
the most sensitive and exhaustive observation. 
But they must both have the finest training for the 
finest expression of countenance. 

No human intelligence can listen to the oratorios 
and symphonies of the masters or patronize the art 
galleries of the world with any degree of apprecia- 
tion without a glorious uplift of feature. ~No sen- 
tient creature can look upon the work of Michael 
Angelo or Eaphael, or attend the productions of 
Liszt, or stand within St. Peter's or the Pantheon, 
without exaltation of spirit and its consequent un- 
f oldment in the countenance. 



"Ah, but a 
man's reach 
should ex- 
ceed his 
grasp ; else 
what is 
heaven 
for ? " 

Robert 
Browning 



CHAPTER XXXV 

The Whisperings 
of Nature 



L 



CHAPTEB XXXV 



THE WHISPERINGS OF NATURE 



Study Nature. It is inspiriting to soul and en- 
nobling to face to contemplate God's works rever- 
ently. 

Do not let the breeze play upon you without a 
mental recognition of its sportiveness. Do not 
allow the dews to moisten the roses at your door 
without meditating upon the principle that creates 
the liquid sphere, and the marvelous laws that 
make the ray of light to polarize and dance and 
glimmer and spangle in the tiny globule. Do not 
allow the sun to rise and set without seeing in its 
glories the luminous birth of being and the resplen- 
dent going down thereof to rise again. 

Question your roses and carnations about their 
complexions. Go into your orchard and ask the 
peach where its blushes came from. Inquire of the 
sunbeam how he holds the rainbow in his heart or 
spreads it upon the storm. Go into the forest and 
worship in "God's first temples." 

The trees are the columns, the foliage above is 
the frescoed ceiling, the carpet of dead leaves be- 
neath brings back the vanished hopes of the past. 
Here every thorn and every bramble symbolize our 
sorrows ; every bud is a prophecy of the new life 
that is to be. Here the oak is majesty of character, 
deep-rooted in the soil and towering back toward 
the sky. Here the clouds float overhead in airy 
and fantastic shapes like the visions and fancies of 
19 289 



"Go, listen 
to voices of 
air, earth, 
and sea, and 
the voices 
that sound 
In the sky." 
Father Ryan 



290 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



" A sanative 
effect I 
experienced 
amid the 
thunder and 
the spray of 
Niagara." 

Tyndall 



men. Here the vines climb and cling so like the 
affectionate tendrils of the soul. Here is freedom 
to breathe and think and dream. 

Go to the plains where God has poured out his 
beneficence in broad league and bewildering ex- 
panse. Sweep the horizon where two worlds come 
together. There in the center of compassing earth 
and sky let the height and depth and length and 
breadth of infinite love possess your meditations. 
Go to the Alps or Andes where God has piled up 
his munificence mountain-high, where rocks and 
sands are willing to whisper the secrets given them 
in the Azoic time ; where treasure of precious metal 
and precious stone are awaiting you; where the 
history of the earth is booked in carbon and sand- 
stone ; where the snows send their melting kisses 
down to the valleys below ; where streams bursting 
with life and dancing with joy rush over rapids, 
splash over cascades, leap from precipice, sparkle 
in the sunshine, and sing their way to the 
sea. 

Go to the shore and hear the organ-tones of the 
deep. Let the sound of many waters fill you with 
awe and reverence. Listen to the loud-voiced 
breakers rolling in leagues and chafing with the 
shore. Watch the tides as they sink and swell. 
Set your thoughts at anchor far out on the deep 
and feel the currents, their temperature, direction, 
causes. Drift in dolphin-like fancy from equato- 
rial zone to polar blockade. Take the hospitality 
of Neptune, and let the living creatures of the 
world of waters marshal before you. Go to the 
cavernous home of iEolus and watch the inception 
of storms and the wreck of tempests. And here, 
while the winds are howling and the billows are 
stampeding, hold a sea-shell to your ear and catch 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 291 



its song ; and, as you listen, hear also the voice that 
bids both winds and waves be still. 

Go to Niagara and let its thunders smite you into 
humility. Observe that only the foam is pale and 
sickly and evanescent; that the character of the 
water does not change ; that the force that pulls the 
ponderous volume down is silent, the same internal 
force that fashioned the earth into a sphere and 
gave the globe its topography. 

Study the green of springtime, the myriad hues 
of summer, the russet tints of autumn, the winding- 
sheet of winter. Meditate upon the rain. Gaze 
through the rift in the clouds (if it is not there, 
make one). Listen to the notes of birds, the sough- 
ing of winds, the trilling of the brook dancing to 
the sunshine's quickstep. Stand on the levee and 
hear the river gathering up the ensemble tones of 
its tributaries and bearing the anthem on to the sea. 

Go forth in the evening ; lift your gaze and your 
thoughts heavenward. Do not stop at the moon. 
Watch the stars make love to one another, twink- 
ling their messages across the blue immensity. 
Take the lead out of your thoughts lest they may 
not rise, or, rising, lest they fall back upon you. 
Let them sweep out beyond the night-bird's cry — 
out beyond the shining worlds, swifter than star- 
beams, on and on and still on till you lose yourself 
in the fathomless deep of the sky and find yourself 
in the fathomless deep of love. 

Commune thus with Nature whenever and wher- 
ever she speaks or sings or paints for you, and your 
divine being, thrilled into intoxication, will mold 
the physical into sweeter graces. "To have imagi- 
nation, to love the best, to be carried by a contem- 
plation of Nature into a vivid faith in the ideal — 
all this is more than any science can teach you. " 



"But why 

the wave 

rises and 

kisses the 

rose, and 

why the rose 

stoops for 

those kisses 

—who 

knows ? " 

Edmund 
Waller 



" Beauty, 
the sensible 
image of the 
infinite." 

George 



292 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 

Man can not give you these lessons. They must 
flow out of the heart of Nature upon her children, 
and they will do more for body and feature than 
the skill of the fashiouable modiste and the nos- 
trums of the complexion doctors can ever do. 



Bancroft 






CHAPTER XXXVI 
The Evolution of 
Selfhood 



CHAPTEE XXXVI 



THE EVOLUTION OF SELFHOOD 



Study yourself. Here you find your most inter- 
esting as also your most important acquaintance. 
It ought furthermore to be the most delightf ul and 
congenial. Ignorance of self is the cause of the 
majority of all bodily disorders. It is the chief 
source of mental unrest. It is, finally, the incu- 
bator of moral turpitude. 

There is nothing of which the average person 
knows less than of himself. Strangers at home! 
Men know money, lands, books, arts, laws, creeds, 
but remain in the porch of the temple of life. 
This temple which you are may be neglected till the 
brambles will climb over its doors and windows, 
till wolves and bats will possess its sanctuaries, till 
chalice and chaucel will lie buried in the dust with 
serpents crawling and hissing around them. 

Go in out of the street. Do not stand too long 
in the vestibule. Disorder and distraction are out 
there. Enter; pass silently, reverently down to 
where the organ is playing and the anthems are 
rising, and answers to prayers are pouring their 
glory over the worshipers. There in the divine 
aura gather unto your soul the ministration of 
things spiritual. 

The legend says that the cross of Christ was 

made of aspen wood, and that out of sympathy with 

His sufferings the leaf of the tree always trembles 

at the approach of man. But the legend is wrong. 

295 



"Study that 
flesh-bound 
volume, 
yourself; if 
you find 
nothing 
within to 
repay you, 
you will find 
nothing 
without." 

Genevieve 
Stebbins 



296 BUILDEBS OF TEE BEAUTIFUL 



"What an 
inferior man 
seeks is in 
others ; 
what a 
superior 
man seeks is 
in himself." 
Bulwer 
Lyfton 



The cross was made of beams of human cruelty and 
spikes of human ingratitude; and ever since its 
ugly arms stretched over Olivet the hearts of men 
have grown tremulous with thoughts of the Master. 
It is the surviving glory of spirit quivering at 
every touch of love, for whoever thinks on Jesus 
reverently feels the pulse of love grow stronger, 
and his features soften with his affectional nature. 
The human heart is the study of all of life. Who- 
ever does not find himself imbued with the Christ- 
spirit has not found his better self. Whoever is 
not sensitive to the doctrines enunciated by the 
great Teacher has not opened his life to the indwell- 
ing of the glory that fills existence with transcend- 
ent qualities and makes the physical the bearer of 
supernal dignities. 

Love is an essential attribute of the Father ; it 
must be an essential element in the life of the child. 
Nothing is clearer, says De Laage, than the uplift 
of face among Christian nations. Acceptance of 
the Christian code by any people guarantees spirit- 
ual and physical graces more surely than the con- 
stitution of that country can guarantee protection 
of life and liberty to its subjects. 

Love is the winsome, wooing angel of beauty. 
Its wings can brush the lines of uncomeliness from 
every face. It followed man from Eden, and wher- 
ever it has been welcome, it has been the guardian 
of the race through all the ages. As from the mys- 
terious sources of the Nile the waters flow down the 
long incline to enrich the desert sands of Egypt, so 
from the deejp of infinite love upon the waste earth 
and its clay still flow the tides of life. 

The sources of power lie in the inherent human 
affinity for divine perfections, and in the preroga- 
tive, ever available and inalienable, of drawing 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 297 



upon them at will. They inhere in the conscious 
oneness and union with the Infinite — in the immor- 
tality that it; in the mortal. Man's faith in the 
eternal verities, in his own immortality, deep-rooted 
and ineradicable, gives the countenance a glorious 
uplift of expression. Blot out this one conviction 
from the mind, this one tenet of the soul's creed, 
and the face would become a mere structure of clay 
— a mere earthen form animated by an earthen 
principle of life. 

The Koran tells us that the trees of Paradise are 
hung with golden bells, and when the dwellers 
there desire music, their wishes, becoming tremu- 
lous with love of the beautiful and pulsating through 
the sensitive air, make every twig grow vibrant 
and set the bells to chiming. This charming fiction 
symbolizes a more charming truth. The tree of 
life is hung with harps whose golden strings, sym- 
pathetic with the longings of the human heart, vi- 
brate into melody in answer to our yearnings for 
perfection. Spiritual bounty was never denied an 
earnest soul. 

Truly has Schilling spoken: "Give man a con- 
sciousness of what he is, and he will soon be what 
he ought to be." In your best moods, nothing is 
too good for you. It is then that angel ministra- 
tions pour their chrysmal oil upon you and the be- 
atitudes are attracted toward you. In your ugly 
moods, nothing is too evil for you. It is then that 
satyr-like spirits enter and claim the body, and all 
the malignities are drawn after you by common 
affinities. 

Study your life; not casually and occasionally, 
but profoundly and persistently. Muse upon the 
marvelous mechanism of your own body — its struc- 
ture, form, adaptation to uses, the functions of the 



"Yourself 

the artist, 

your face 

the clay to 

be molded 

into an 

exalted 

expression, 

the form 

must come 

of a high 

ideal 

within." 

Genevieve 
Stebbins 



298 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"So nigh 
the great 
warm heart 
of God you 
almost seem 
to feel it 
beat." 

James 
Russell 
Lowell 



vital organs, heart, lungs, skin, digestive apparatus, 
the mysterious action of brain and nervous system. 
Analyze the divine principle with which you think. 
Meditate upon the ethereal attributes of the soul, 
its sorrows, delights, hopes, fears, affections, faith, 
its conscious kinship with God, its intuitive convic- 
tions of immortality, the grandeur of what you are 
and yet may be, the inner potentialities that offer 
unfoldment forever, unfoldment of beauty super- 
nal, unfoldment of bliss in the prophecies and the 
promises of the Christ — spiritual sovereignty and 
spiritual dominion — all these, and more; study 
them, reflect much and often and reverently upon 
them, and psychic glories will pervade and spread 
over all your physical being. 

Hold fast the idea of your oneness with God. 
Cling to the truth of your likeness to infinite per- 
fections. Do not linger in the bogs and lagoons of 
earth when the Chamouni of soul awaits your com- 
ing. Self-abasement is the only abasement that 
can utterly destroy you. Whoever depreciates the 
value of human life, slanders God and belies the 
truth in his own being. The falsest doctrine in all 
the world is that we are poor, worthless creatures. 
God has never given life to a trifle. He has never 
made anything cheap. There is no law under 
which a worthless being could either receive or 
hold existence. Life is not small. In proper ad- 
justment it is the individual type of the best that 
God has made. If you can normally accommodate 
your soul to physical environment on the one hand, 
and to spiritual environment on the other, you are 
great enough. 

Growth is revolution, evolution, and involution 
— revolution against the powers that deform soul 
and body; evolution out of the abnormal life we 



mmm 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 299 



are living ; involution into the divine perfections 
which we may attain. The spiritual forces must be 
wooed into service unceasingly. Keep in vibration 
the beautiful impulses. They are the incandescent 
lights of the Temple. They grow more brilliant as 
you contemplate them — as you turn on the currents 
of thought. They shed a holier light as you charge 
the circuit with pure affections. Have faith in 
your inherent attributes of character. They are 
like God's if you give them liberty. Eealize the 
fact that you possess the divine attributes, wisdom, 
love, power, as the real, living, breathing image of 
the Father who made us all, and that these attri- 
butes, though abused and dwarfed, may be normal- 
ized and redeemed till heaven and earth will sit and 
sup together. 

Eealize also that in His image you can not be de- 
formed or uncomely, and that in so far as you may 
have departed from the ideal life, you may return 
and repossess it all. Eealize that on this earth you 
stand sponsor for God. Eealize that departure 
from the original image is the only destruction of 
beauty internal and external, and that in the re- 
tention of this likeness lies the pledge of perpetual 
grace in form and feature. Eealize that as from 
infinite perfections you have your being, so from 
the same unwasted fulness may you draw the ele- 
ments of beautiful and continued being. Believe 
in your spiritual forces as a divine endowment, and 
in the power to rule and regulate your life in ac- 
cordance with your loftiest ideals. 

Enter the companionship of Him who said : " Lo, 
I am with you alway." You can not leave the 
Christ- spirit out of your life if you would be truly 
beautiful. The doctrines of the lowly Nazarene 
embrace every principle of science, every law of 



"Wouldst 
thou thy 
Godlike 
power 
preserve P 
Be Godlike 
in the will 
to serve." 
Joseph B. 
Gilder 



300 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"Realize 
that outer 
poise is but 
a corre- 
spondence of 
inner poise 
— the only 
perfect state 
— mental, 
moral and 
physical 
poise." 

Genevievo 
Stebbins 



philosophy, every maxim of art, every tenet of faith 
that could exalt the soul or illumine the body. 
The face of beauty must be worshipful and oft up- 
turned in prayer. " Enter into thy closet . . . shut 
the door . . . pray. " Commune with your higher 
self, and let your higher self commune with infinite 
perfections. Cultivate susceptibility to the spir- 
itual powers that wait to minister unto you. Cher- 
ish suggestibility to divine impingement. The 
Father's hand rests in blessings upon the head of 
His child. 

Keep the subliminal self receptive to the inflow 
of power from the Supernal Life. Go into the si- 
lence often, and there open your ears to the still, 
small voice. " Yea, God is sweet ; my mother told 
me so ; she never told me wrong. " Meditate much 
and regularly upon the mysteries of your own 
being. Let God into the closet before you shut the 
door. Talk to Him out of your heart. Use soul- 
words when you address Him. Let the yearnings 
of your life, unuttered and unutterable, pour into 
the divine ear as it bends to hear the unspoken 
language of desire. With strength gathered up in 
the cloisters of communion with the Infinite, go 
your way through the world, and you go with power 
upon you. Go with your credentials from the 
councils of the Trinity, and you go clothed with 
the insignia of victory. Go thus inspired, God's 
sponsor throughout the earth, and the loftiest and 
the sweetest things that heaven has given your 
soul will abide in your body and rest their glories 
on your face. 

Eemember once again that access to the sources 
of loveliness and strength is an individual matter. 
You must draw for yourself upon the Infinite for 
the secrets of power and grace and beauty. Not 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 301 



any other nor the guardian spirit of any other can 
drink in truth and assimilate virtue and live grandly 
for you. The daemon of Socrates that warned and 
sustained the old philosopher can not spare you the 
fatal hemlock. The angel that was ever present 
with St. Cecilia, protecting her when she refused to 
worship the Eoman deities, can not shield you from 
the inquisitor's axe. The voices that inspired the 
Maid of Orleans to deliver France from England 
can not liberate you from the thraldom of your own 
vices, nor divorce from those vices their power to 
deform. The heart of Bruce carried by Lord James 
against the Moors can not save you from the pas- 
sional Saracens that besiege your life. Not the 
cabalistic measures of the mystics nor the dreams 
and phantasms of occultism can give you power in 
your own right. 

You are yourself the sovereign legatee, and your 
title can not pass to another. Hebe, when cup- 
bearer to the gods, had the gift of restoring youth 
and beauty; but a greater than Hebe dwells with- 
in you. Not the laurel wreath of the Pythian 
Games, nor the wild olive of the Olympian, nor the 
green parsley of the Nemean, nor the pine leaf of 
the Isthmian arena can be the material for your 
brow. The immortelles of grand living are the 
garlands for you. Other influences may help you 
according as you utilize them, but you are your 
own seer and the fulfiller of your own prophecies. 

According as you unclog the avenues for the 
entrance of soul-power, will you receive psychic 
energy and bodily illumination. According as you 
individualize and appropriate the silent forces that 
are yours in fee simple, will you realize facial un- 
foldment toward your justifiable vanity. Accord- 
ing to your capacity for spiritual enlightenment, 



" 'He is ever 
a man that 
stands like 



one 



he 



must look 
like a man." 
Edward 
Amherst 
Oft 



302 BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 



"OGod, I 

think Thy 
thoughts 
after Thee." 
Johann Kepler 



and as you open the windows for its reception, will 
the light stream into the Temple and rest upon the 
altar. Listen and meditate, and yearn and pray, 
and you shall be guided. Sandalphon, the confes- 
sional angel, is waiting to weave your prayers into 
crowns. 

You know not the day nor the hour when splen- 
dors surpassing your dreams shall burst upon you. 
God's way is best. Wait. You can afford to wait. 
Upon your sky the glow of spiritual glory will 
come. It may not be as you expect, for we see as 
through a glass darkly. It may be the flaming 
manifestation of power that smote St. Paul and his 
deputies on their way to Damascus, calling you to 
the ministry of nobler living. It may be the fire 
of the Burning Bush commissioning you priesthood 
over your own being. It may be the test of friend- 
ship — as of Euth and Naomi — the very best test, 
after all, of one's character. It may be on some 
Isle of Patmos, or in the Wilderness of Judea, or 
in the shadows of Horeb, or at the pool of Siloam, 
or amid the thunders of Sinai, or along the shores 
of Galilee, or among the rocks of Golgotha. We 
know not how nor when nor where, but to those 
who wait upon spiritual ministrations the power of 
grand living will come somewhere, somehow, some- 
time, and with it will come that uplift of counte- 
nance that is the inevitable product of spiritual 
exaltation. 

In the contemplation of loveliness and the acqui- 
sition of grace, our ideals may rise till angel spirits 
will greet them from the sky in fellowship with 
their kind, till the Apollos and the Venuses shall 
come out of the marble and enter the souls and 
bodies of men and women. God was the Original 
Designer, but you are the sculptor in your own 



BUILDERS OF THE BEAUTIFUL 303 



right. The marble, the mallet, the chisel, the di- 
vine ideals, have all been committed unto you. 
Meanwhile, also, the lessons of art are unceasingly- 
whispered into your ear. In the silence of this 
wonderful studio the very angels are the studies of 
the artist. For him they pose in divinest attitudes. 
Listen, and you shall hear the teaching. Look, and 
you shall see the models. Strive, and you shall at- 
tain the desire of your heart. 

As Pygmalion, day after day, carved with pa- 
tience upon the stone, idealizing, dreaming, pray- 
ing, till the statue took the perfect graces of form 
and life and motion, so may you, without mallet or 
chisel, hammer or saw, construct the divine archi- 
tecture of the Temple Beautiful. 



"Thou 
didst tell 
me love is a 
star leading 
us on to 
Heaven." 

Ingomar 

to Parthenia 



THE END. 



DEC 3 1903 



